you the sunflower, and i the north winds
by fairytale ideals
Summary: It started with a stranger on the sidewalk yelling at Hunter. Things escalated from there. Or, "in which Hunter tries to be a Good Samaritan, Sebastian is a poor navigator when drunk, and much Netflix is watched and takeout consumed."
1. Chapter 1

Hello and welcome! I realized that the amount of love I have for Huntbastian as compared to how much I have written for Huntbastian just isn't right, so here we are. More chapters are soon to come. Hope you enjoy! :)

* * *

 _"There's nothing I want more than to grow and change with you, you the sunflower, and I the north winds."_

Hunter didn't know a whole lot about how he wanted his life to be. He joined the army straight out of high school and, though it had been something that he had always assumed he had wanted (though upon further consideration he may have reached the conclusion that it was more about what his father had wanted for him, the Claringtons being a proud military family), after a few years it had lost its luster. So he found himself back as a civilian at age twenty-one, going to college and trying to figure out what it was that he wanted to do with his life. The crises that his high school friends had had about finding their place in the world when they were starting college, he had just pushed off for four years.

But still, he made it through college and he got a degree in accounting and now at age twenty-five he was questioning every choice he had made up to then. It wasn't that he was hurting for money; no, there was enough of it in the family to go around, and the job he had paid decently well, which is why he hadn't been able to convince himself that leaving it was alright, even though he left every day feeling more and more drained emotionally. And relationships weren't a problem, either. Sure, he had only had a serious girlfriend or two, but that didn't seem to him to be much of an issue, seeing as he wasn't looking for that kind of commitment at this point in his life. Everything was going fine, but he just felt a bit unsettled.

He just knew that he was a good person. Or, at least, he liked to think of himself as a good person. He attended church regularly (not every weekend, but he was a busy person), he held doors open for people, he always donated money to anything involving the Wounded Warrior Project. Hell, for a while his apartment had felt like a hotel for other people's pets when they went out of town or their own apartments were being inspected and their dog or cat wasn't registered because they felt the pet deposits were unfair – and he was allergic to dogs.

(This was also how he had ended up with a couple of cats who found there forever home with him; the unfortunately named Mr. Puss when he was in college, and now called Tesla (named after Nikola Tesla, of course), who was a white and tabby ball of energy.)

Being a good person, as it turned out, wasn't always the great thing that he acted like it was. It wasn't that he got taken advantage of for it; no, he was nice, not overly naive, and that felt like an important distinction to make. No, being nice lead to nights like this one.

The thing is, living in Washington, DC meant a couple of things, like how you had to make sure to steer clear of certain sketchy areas, and the fact that no matter where you were, you were never actually very far from anything else. What that meant to Hunter specifically was that he lived about a block away from a fairly popular club. He had never been to said club but he had heard the music coming from within a number of times, seen drunk people stumble their way out into Ubers waiting on the curb. It had never seemed like his kind of thing.

He liked to sit out on the balcony of his second floor apartment, though (he had picked his apartment specifically for said balcony, and the steep change in price because of it all but demanded regular use to make it worthwhile), and often enough he would hear people on their way to and from the club. Such as that night.

It started with a voice from down below. "Hey asshole!"

Hunter couldn't help himself to look down, only to find that there was someone on the ground below looking up at the apartment building. More specifically, it looked like the man was looking at _him_.

"Hey asshole," the guy repeated. "Oh. I see you. I see you looking."

Based on the way his words were slurring together and how he could only last a couple of seconds before almost falling and having to quickly move a leg to catch himself, it was fairly obvious that he was drunk.

"What?" Hunter called out, deciding that it couldn't hurt to humor the guy a little bit.

"I don't know you, but I know… I know he's in there," the guy said.

"Who is in where?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't fucking play dumb," he called back, glaring up at Hunter.

Hunter chuckled to himself, rolling his eyes. "I really have no idea what you're talking about."

"Like hell you don't," he said, shaking his head. "You're probably the one fucking him now, huh? Well I hope he gives you…" He paused there, clearly trying to decide what was suitably cruel. "Herpes."

"I'm not involved with anyone," he said, leaning against the railing to look down at the guy better. He was clearly tall, even slouched the way he was now against a convenient newspaper dispenser box, with brown hair.

"Not that I have herpes. He's a slut, he probably picked them up somewhere since me," he was going on, as if he hadn't heard Hunter speak.

"Well, that's great," he said. "But I still have no idea who you're talking about. And you shouldn't say slut."

"I don't like slut either," he said, looking momentarily thoughtful. "But what else am I supposed to call it when he's got a dick in his mouth and a dick in his ass and a fucking _line_ waiting."

Hunter had to hold back a laugh at that, though at the same time the words made him feel like he ought to do something. Shouting profanities and other questionable subject matter in the middle of the street didn't seem right.

"I just want to give him a piece of my mind, is all," the guy said, doing his best to make this fact sound entirely casual. "Can you get him out here?"

"No one else is here," Hunter said, shaking his head. "Just me."

"Just you? You promise."

"I promise."

The guy groaned, running his fingers through his hair. "But he _lives_ here."

Hunter had been living in his same apartment since he had left the army, so that claim didn't seem to him like it could be true. But of course, an inebriated mind would never be the best navigator. "I think you're lost."

"I'm not, I'm…" he started, trailing off and looking around him. "This building looks like his. I practically lived with him."

"Sure, but not here," he said. "Maybe a floor up or something. I don't know."

The guy shrugged, shaking his head slowly. He didn't say anything for a moment, just sliding to sit down with his back still leaned up against the newspaper box. "I'm gonna puke," he groaned eventually.

Those words spring Hunter into action. He was a mother hen by nature, and he had done plenty of taking care of his drunk friends in college, so the thought that someone was about to throw up (especially in public) was not only something he was equipped to handle, but it also triggered an almost Pavlovian response in him. He left the balcony (he thought he might have heard the guy say something else, but he wasn't sure and he didn't particularly care at that point) and went around to go out to the sidewalk. He leaned down to help the guy to his feet, leading him over to a trashcan. It wasn't ideal, but it would certainly be better than the sidewalk below, or if he threw up on himself.

Sure enough, he was heaving within a few seconds, leaning on Hunter for support as aiming for the trash can was taking up what focus he might have otherwise used to remain standing.

As Hunter watched him, he realized that he wasn't sure that he trusted him to get home on his own. And though he knew that he should probably know better than to care so much about some random stranger, he couldn't help it.

So when the guy seemed to have recovered a bit, Hunter asked him, "What's your name?"

"Sebastian," he answered, looking at him with an expression of low level confusion on his face.

"Okay, Sebastian, I'm Hunter," he said. "How far away do you live from here? How are you getting home?"

Sebastian's lack of an answer felt like answer enough.

"Okay, come on," he said, looping his arm around Sebastian's waist to keep him steady as he led him up to his apartment. Once they were up there he brought him back to the bathroom, knowing it was likely that he would need to throw up again. He went and got him water, having to all but force it down his throat.

Hunter knew that bringing a random stranger into his home and allowing him to stay there wasn't necessarily the smartest idea; it was always the kind of thing that his mother would have warned him against. But the thing was, Sebastian was clearly a mess and he didn't seem like he would be all too dangerous and Hunter would rather run that risk than hear about the guy's dead body being found in an alley somewhere.

With that in mind, once he seemed to be done throwing up, Hunter brought him some of his clothes to sleep in ("I'm way taller than you, your sweatpants won't fit me." "You're like two inches taller than me, shut up and put them on") and helped him into the living room where he set up the couch for him. He gave him more water before laying him down on his side on the couch and heading off to bed, with instructions that should Sebastian need anything, he need only wake Hunter up.

And sure enough, Sebastian did come knock on his door a short while later.

"Your couch is really shitty," he complained, leaning against the door frame once Hunter opened it.

"So you can't sleep on it?" he asked, a bit surprised by how discerning Sebastian apparently was; the few times that he had gotten drunk, all he needed to get to sleep was a surface that was at least somewhat flat.

"No," he said, not waiting for an invitation before brushing past Hunter to go get into his bed.

"Okay. Sure. Take my bed," he said, letting out an exasperated sigh. "You better not throw up in it."

"I won't," Sebastian said as he flopped down onto the bed.

"So, is that better?"

"Yeah, it'll work," he said, sighing softly and closing his eyes.

"Right. So, I'll be out on the couch, then," he said, turning around to go out into the living room.

"Nonsense," Sebastian mumbled, his eyes opening again. "This is a big bed. C'mere."

Hunter turned around, hesitating for a moment. It wasn't like he was afraid of sleeping in the same bed as another man, no, his masculinity wasn't that fragile, but still… It felt like it would be odd to sleep beside Sebastian, a complete stranger.

"Why are you just standing there? Get in bed."

"Alright, fine," he mumbled with a soft sigh, going over and getting into bed on the other side from Sebastian. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

It took Hunter a while to get to sleep that night, part of him still in caretaker mode in case Sebastian did wake up and needed something but didn't wake him. When he did finally fall asleep, he slept like a rock until morning, opening his eyes with surprise to see light coming in from the window instead of being woken up by the man sleeping beside him.

….Actually, make that the man who _had been_ sleeping beside him. When Hunter rolled over to look at him, he found that he was gone, his place on the bed cold. He got to his feet and went out to see where Sebastian was, if he was still around, finding him in the bathroom going through his medicine cabinet.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

Sebastian startled at the sound of his voice, jerking back and hitting his head on the cabinet door. "Oh god," he mumbled, stopping for a moment and rubbing his head. He looked back at Hunter after a bit, asking, "Ibuprofen? Advil?"

"Right," Hunter said with a small nod, shutting the cabinet and leading Sebastian out to his kitchen where he pulled a pill bottle out of one of his drawers. Giving him two of the pills and a cup of water, he asked, "Need anything else?"

"Do you have powers that enable you to go back in time and make me drink less than I did?" he deadpanned after downing the pills and water.

"Can't do that," he said, shaking his head. "You're sure you don't want any food or anything?"

"Oh god, no, no food," Sebastian said, shaking his head.

Hunter nodded and sat down on a stool at his breakfast counter. "So, you don't drink that much normally, right?"

"No, not anymore," he said, shaking his head. "Used to. Forgot how shitty this part was." He laid his arm down on the counter, dropping his forehead against it.

"Not anymore," he repeated. "How old are you?"

"Yep, not anymore," Sebastian affirmed, turning his head so that he could look up at Hunter with a look that very much said 'not impressed'. "Twenty-four, don't act so surprised. Let's just say I started drinking at the legal age, that's still time enough for me to have burnt out on it after going too hard."

"But you didn't start drinking at the legal age," he said, the words almost a question but not quite there.

"Of course not," he said. "Who does?"

"I did," Hunter said with a small shrug.

"Well good for you," he said, closing his eyes again. He didn't say anything for a moment, then asked, "How did I end up in your apartment? I mean, all things considered, we _could've_ had sex, but…"

"No, god no," Hunter said, shaking his head. "I'm not gay, for starters, but—"

"Are you sure?" he asked, looking up at him with a small smirk. "You seem kind of bi to me. Not even a little?"

"Not at all, and that's not the point," he said, shaking his head. "You were drunk off your ass so I brought you in here."

"So you're a good Samaritan," he said, chuckling. "That's cute."

Hunter doesn't even bother to say something about his word choice of "cute," just shaking his head. "I just do my best," he said.

"Well, I didn't die, so, good," he said. Looking around the room, he added, "And I have definitely done worse as far as places I've woken up hungover. Nice place you've got here. It kind of reminds me of my ex's."

"I know," he said with a soft chuckle.

Sebastian raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you?" he said. After a pause, he added, "Do I want to know?"

"That's how I first became aware of you," he said. "You were shouting at me because you thought this was your ex's apartment."

"Oh," he said, sighing as he pulled himself to sit up. "Well, that's embarrassing. But I guess I could have done worse." He paused for a moment, his face falling into a deep frown. "I could have _actually_ ended up at his apartment."

Hunter frowned slightly at him, recognizing something in that look and deciding it might benefit to steer Sebastian away from that trail of thought. "And you ended up with a bed to sleep in, so I'd go ahead and call it a win," he pointed out with a small shrug.

"That's true," he said. A smirk forming on his lips, he added, "I could have done a lot better, though, too. I mean, look at you. At least I could have gotten you to spoon me, you know, gotten those nice arms around me."

"Again, not gay," he said.

Sebastian shrugged, shaking his head. "Cuddling a bit doesn't make you gay," he said. "And taking a compliment from a guy who just so happens to be gay doesn't make you gay by association. You've clearly put some work into those."

"I guess," he said with a slow nod, looking down at his arms and feeling weirdly caught off guard by the compliment (not that he hadn't heard anything like it before, he worked out often and didn't always wear sleeves so it was bound to happen, but something about the context made him not expect it).

"Anyways," he said, sighing as he slowly got to his feet. "I've been in your way long enough, I ought to get going and get out of your hair."

"It's no big deal, really," he said, shrugging at his words. "I mean, you've been… entertaining."

Sebastian smiled softly at that, shaking his head and disappearing into the bathroom where his clothes from the night before were still waiting. He came back out a few minutes later, giving Hunter a quick wave. "Thank you for taking care of my drunk ass," he said as he headed towards the door. "Your clothes are on the bathroom counter. If I were to leave a review for you on Yelp, you'd get four stars out of five. Or four and a half if you can give halves, I don't know."

"Why not five out of five?" Hunter asked, raising an eyebrow at him. He wasn't sure why he asked; it wasn't like it mattered, and there was no reason that he should care about some random guy's opinion. But still, he felt like he had done a pretty damn good job and he deserved five stars.

"Spooning, Hunter, of course it's the spooning," he said with a small grin as he opened the door. "So, the next time you bring some poor unfortunate soul in from the streets, take pity on him and spoon the guy."

And with that, he stepped out the door and closed it behind him with a click.


	2. Chapter 2

By all means, that probably should have been the end of it. There was no reason for either of them to see each other again, and as entertaining as Sebastian had been, he wasn't really going to miss him or anything like that. Most likely, Hunter assumed he would never see him again.

That is, of course, Hunter walked into a coffee shop one early morning to see Sebastian sitting in the corner, eyes focused on a laptop in front of him. It took him a moment to register why the face was familiar, and once he did he debated for a bit whether or not he should go up to him. It wasn't like they were friends, after all, and Sebastian looked busy. But still, there was something that made him want to talk to him again.

He went up to the counter and ordered himself a coffee, waiting and getting it from the barista before heading over to the table where Sebastian was sitting (given how focused the other man clearly was, he thought that maybe interrupting him would be rude, but he also reasoned that he would only be there for a moment before leaving to head off to work). Sebastian jumped, clearly startled, when Hunter appeared before him, looking up and letting out a slightly embarrassed laugh once he realized who it was.

"Sorry, didn't mean to sneak up on you," Hunter said.

"No, it's fine," he said, shaking his head. "I'm kind of in a trance here, so anything would've gotten me."

"What're you doing?" he asked, raising an eyebrow and glancing at what was on Sebastian's computer screen.

"Ugh, it's nothing, just… It's boring. Property law stuff," he said, shaking his head and letting out a long breath. "Basically, kill me."

"Sounds like fun," Hunter said, chuckling softly. He wanted to ask why it was that Sebastian was doing anything that involved property law, but depending on what the circumstances were, it might be overstepping and he didn't want to cause any awkwardness between them.

"Oh, you know it," he mumbled, shaking his head. He reached over and grabbed his coffee cup, taking a sip before grimacing at the cup as if it had offended him. "This didn't used to be cold."

"How long have you been here?" he asked.

Sebastian let out a long breath and shook his head. "This is the closest 24-hour coffee shop to my apartment," he said in lieu of an answer.

"That bad, huh?" he asked.

"Worse," he said with a soft chuckle, shaking his head. "I wasn't kidding. Kill me. That would be a real act of mercy."

"Sorry, but no can do," he said with a soft laugh, shaking his head. "I work pretty hard to maintain a good relationship with the law."

Sebastian raised an eyebrow at him. "It takes work, huh?" he asked, an entirely too mischievous look in his eye. "Maybe I've got you pegged wrong."

"Pray tell, how _do_ you have me pegged?"

"You seem, you know, average straight-laced wholesome guy," he said with a shrug. "A little bit boring, maybe, but the nice kind of boring."

Hunter wanted to protest it, but he couldn't. "I guess you're not too far off," he said with a shrug, though some part of him still did want to vehemently deny it and tell Sebastian about how interesting and worthwhile and not at all boring he was.

Sebastian chuckled softly, nodding. "Well, at least you're owning up to it," he said with an amused smile, sipping from his coffee again. "I should probably get a new coffee."

"And I should probably get going soon," he said after he checked the clock, knowing that it might take him a bit to get to work and he didn't want to risk being late.

"Alright," he said with a small nod, getting to his feet. "Just… You don't have to, but would it be possible for you to stay and watch my stuff for just, like, two minutes?"

"No, I can do that, no problem," Hunter replied, because he was nothing if not accommodating.

As Sebastian left and went to get his coffee, Hunter sat down at the table for a moment, glancing at the computer screen though the screen had gone dark while they were talking. He absentmindedly played with the cardboard holder on his coffee cup, his eyes returning to watch Sebastian order and wait for his drink. When the other man returned a few minutes later he offered him a smile before getting up and starting to leave. "Bye," he said. "Hope your day gets better."

"One can only hope," Sebastian said as he walked away, his eyes already having returned to his computer. "Talk to you later."

As luck would have it, because he had waited the extra couple of minutes, he arrived at the Metro station just in time to see his train leave without him. And yet, he couldn't bring himself to be too bitter about it.

* * *

Hunter didn't really think too much about the fact that Sebastian had said he would talk to him later. After all, that was just the kind of thing that you said when ending a conversation, little more than a habit. That was, of course, until one day he walked into his apartment to find that someone was already there, sitting on his couch. His heart started to pound until his mind processed who it was, as well as the fact that his cat was sitting on the man's lap, which felt like a good indicator that nothing was seriously wrong.

"What are you doing in here?" Hunter asked as he walked in, making Sebastian's head snap up from where he had been looking down at Tesla. "Actually, back up, how did you get in here?"

"Believe it or not, under your door mat actually isn't the best hiding place for your spare key," Sebastian replied with a small shrug, holding up the key as evidence.

"Okay…" he said, nodding slowly. He couldn't exactly argue that. It had just felt like the best place to put it, with no other good hiding spots in the area around his apartment. "That still doesn't answer the question of _why_ you're here."

"I don't know," he said with a small shrug. "I was in the neighborhood. I know that doesn't make it any less creepy and weird that I'm here, because it _is_ creepy and weird, I know, but still. I was around."

"So you decided to break into my apartment?" he asked.

Sebastian chuckled, rolling his eyes. "You're making it sound worse than it is. I wouldn't call it breaking in if I simply used a key that was readily available to me, albeit not with permission," he said, shrugging. "I don't know. I knocked first. But I figured I would pop in and see you. I mean, I've slept here before."

"I'm not sure that qualifies for randomly showing up at my apartment. We're not exactly friends," he said, though there was no bite behind his words.

Sebastian put a hand to his chest dramatically, saying, "You know, it really cuts deep to hear you say we're not friends. I really felt something here."

"Oh, shut up," he said with a soft laugh.

"So okay, yes. It is weird that I'm here, but am I wrong in assuming I'm not unwelcome?" he asked with a small grin. When it took too long for Hunter to answer, he let him off the hook, looking down at the cat that was settled in his lap. "Anyways, why didn't I notice that you had a cat when I was here before?"

Hunter shrugged, watching for a moment as Sebastian scratched under Tesla's chin. "I don't know. He's not great with strangers, he was probably hiding," he said. It wasn't untrue, though it also wasn't especially true, either. Tesla _didn't_ like strangers, but he also just plain didn't like most people. It took him a long time to get warmed up to someone, and the only person that Hunter could remember Tesla cuddling with was himself; he wasn't sure what it meant that Sebastian had seemingly managed to get him to warm to him immediately.

"Ah," Sebastian said with a small nod of understanding, looking down at the cat with a small smile. "I guess that is what cats do. Or so I've heard, I don't know, I've never had a cat before."

"Never would've known," he said. "You appear to have already figured out all of Tesla's favorite spots to be pet."

"Tesla?" he echoed with an eyebrow raised, chuckling softly. "You named the cat Tesla?"

"Well, not me, but yeah," he said. "I inherited him from a friend who was really into that whole electric coil thing. I don't really know much about it."

He nodded, moving so his hands were on either side of Tesla and lifting him up by under his front legs to look at him. To Hunter's surprise, the cat didn't protest being picked up, just looked back at Sebastian with wide eyes. "He doesn't really look like a Tesla, but then again what do I know?"

Hunter didn't say anything for a moment, just watched Sebastian interacting with his cat. As Tesla moved his head forward to sniff at Sebastian's face, he puckered his lips and gave him a kiss, chuckling softly afterward.

"I might have to steal him," Sebastian said as he lowered the cat back down, looking back at Hunter. "He'd liven up my apartment."

"Not happening," he said, shaking his head. He watched as Tesla hopped off of Sebastian's lap, stalking off to somewhere deeper in the apartment. "Though I'd be glad to give you the address of some animal shelters around here where you could adopt your own cat."

"Ooh, no, that sounds like a lot of work when there is a perfectly good cat right here," he said with a soft laugh.

Hunter laughed and rolled his eyes, shaking his head. "He's a pain in the ass, I think you'd get tired of him pretty quickly."

"You don't know that," he said. "And he didn't seem that bad. Maybe you're just bad at handling him."

"He's been my cat for a couple of years, I don't think that I'm bad at handling him," he chuckled.

"Well, you never know," Sebastian said with a small shrug, grinning at him. "All I'm saying is, I appear to be getting along with him rather swimmingly after such a short time."

Those words reminded Hunter of the circumstances under which he found Sebastian and Tesla just now. "How long were you in here before I arrived?"

"Um…" he started, pausing for a moment to look around the room for a clock before resorting to pulling out his cell phone. "I guess about an hour or so?"

"Huh," he said, nodding slowly. He had expected Sebastian to say that it had only been a few minutes, whether or not it was true, if for no other reason than to save face a bit. "Well, good thing I didn't get caught up late at work."

"What kind of job do you have that you could get home at three o'clock in the afternoon?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Some days I leave early, my boss and I get on pretty well," Hunter said with a small shrug. "What kind of job do you have that you aren't working at all at three o'clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday?"

"I'm a stripper," Sebastian said brightly.

"Wait, really?" he asked, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

"No," he said with a laugh, shaking his head. "But god, your face. Priceless." He paused for a moment, grinning at Hunter. "Does that mean you think I'm hot enough to be a stripper?"

"I don't know, Sebastian," he said and rolled his eyes, but he would be lying if he said the gesture was more genuinely annoyed than fond. "Once again, for starters, I'm not into guys, so—"

"You can tell someone is hot and it doesn't make you gay," he said with a laugh, shaking his head. "Like, that girl in those pictures over there? Your sister, maybe? She looks kind of like you, so I kind of figure she's your sister, I don't know. Anyways, I know she is hot, but I wouldn't bang her."

"Yeah, that's my sister," he said with a small nod, glancing over towards the pictures on his wall that he had been talking about. "Okay, so, sure, you have a nice face, and you seem like you're probably pretty fit, I don't know. But a stripper, you know, strips, and I've never seen you in any state of undress, so…"

Those were the wrong words to say, of course, and Hunter knew it as soon as they were out of his mouth. Sebastian sat up, looking at him with a grin and lifting up his t-shirt slightly. "Kidding," he said after a second, dropping the fabric back down and settling back against the couch once more. "But… Wait, I was wearing your clothes the other day, so I absolutely must have changed, but I was shitfaced, so…"

Hunter shrugged. "I don't know, I guess you managed," he said. "I mean, I would have helped you if you needed it, but I left you to your own devices in the bathroom, alone."

"Damn, I'm good," Sebastian said with a small grin.

"That's not the moral of the story here," he said, shaking his head.

"Yeah, you're right, the moral is that I could have a promising career in stripping if what I'm doing right now doesn't work out," he said with a soft laugh.

"And what you're doing right now is…?"

"I'm still a student," Sebastian said, shaking his head. "Law. Kill me."

"Law, huh?" he said, nodding and doing his best to hide his surprise at the fact that Sebastian was studying to become a lawyer; it wasn't like he didn't think that the other man was smart enough for it, hell, he hardly knew him to know whether or not he was, it just didn't seem, based on what he _did_ know about Sebastian, that it would be his kind of thing. Granted, of course, it did explain why he was pulling an all-nighter at a coffee shop studying property law, but still.

"Yeah," he said, shrugging. "It's kind of part of the deal when it comes to being a Smythe."

It struck Hunter then that they hadn't exchanged last names before then. He hadn't known anything about Sebastian besides his first name, and though it didn't really make a difference, he still kind of liked knowing. Sebastian Smythe. "Ah, yeah, family thing, I get that," he said instead of commenting on the fact that he had just learned Sebastian's full name. "So, do you not like law?"

"Oh, no, I like it alright," he said with a small shrug. "I mean, I'm working on being paid to argue. How great is that? The only thing that sucks about it is, well, how fucking much school I have to go through."

"I see," he said with a small nod.

"So yeah, it's a few steps above stripper," Sebastian said with a soft chuckle. "I don't even know of any strip clubs around here, especially not male strip clubs." He paused for a moment, looking contemplative. "We should find a strip club and go to it."

"That sounds terrible," he said, rolling his eyes.

Sebastian sighed, shaking his head in disapproval (though the grin on his face betrayed him somewhat). "Why am I getting the feeling that you weren't lying when you said you were boring?" he asked.

"Because I _am_ incredibly boring," he said.

"Okay, you know what, I lied, I don't believe that," he said. "But hey, I told you what I do, so it's only fair that you should reciprocate. That seems like a good start in unraveling the mystery of how interesting you secretly are."

"I'm an accountant," Hunter said with a soft laugh, shaking his head.

"For fuck's sake," he said with a laugh, shaking his head. "You're kidding. You have got to be kidding. You just came up with the most boring profession you could think of and said it, right?"

"Nope," he said, chuckling.

"Like, I am envisioning your life as being that boring accounting firm on Parks and Rec," he said with a laugh. "You know, the one Ben keeps almost working for but never actually does? Wait, actually, you know Parks and Rec, right?"

"I never watched it," Hunter said with a small shrug.

"What? That's…" he trailed off, shaking his head. "We'll have to fix that. My god, never seen Parks and Rec."

"And now you've spoiled it for me. Some Ben guy never works for an accounting firm," he said, laughing softly.

Sebastian rolled his eyes and laughed. "That's such a minor thing," he said. "Okay, we have to watch Parks and Recreation together. We just have to."

"Okay, okay," he said, chuckling. "We can watch Parks and Rec." He wasn't sure why exactly he was agreeing to this; he and Sebastian were not friends, and that was the sort of thing that you did with your friends. Maybe it was as simple as the fact that them barely knowing each other meant that this would likely never happen.

"Anyways, I better get going," Sebastian said, getting to his feet. "I'll see you later." And with that, he walked out of the apartment, not a word about exchanging numbers or anything. If he were to indeed see Hunter later, that would have to mean showing up at his apartment again, and Hunter felt fairly confident that he wouldn't actually do that.

* * *

He didn't see Sebastian again for a while after that day, though that wasn't to say that he didn't hear from him. About a week and a half after the day he had come home to find Tesla and Sebastian together on his couch, he arrived home after work one day to find an envelope stuck to his door.

Written on the envelope in thick blue letters was a message: _It's only fair that you can break into my place, too. –SS_

Below that there was an address and a phone number, and when he opened up the envelope he found a single key inside. Hunter chuckled to himself as he saw it, setting it down on his coffee table where it was left untouched for a few days.

The thing was this: having Sebastian's phone number, address, and key meant that at this point he was putting the ball was in Hunter's court. Unless they by chance met up again or Sebastian got tired of waiting for him and showed up at his apartment again, they could potentially never speak again (though he had to admit that that would be a weird place to leave off, and there was something unsettling about an ending that was not an ending at all).

It wasn't that he didn't want to see Sebastian again. No, he was fairly certain that he did. Sure, he seemed a bit… Hunter wasn't sure what the word he was looking for was, exactly, but at any rate, in the past, Hunter had tended to choose company that fell on the more conservative side of things. That wasn't to say that Hunter was homophobic or that if he was uncomfortable around Sebastian that it would be because of his sexuality, but there was still something to be said about the fact that, from what he could tell, they were two very different people, likely both in terms of the beliefs they'd been raised with as well as just lived experiences.

Still, though, he felt like they could get along. Thus far, after all, they had been getting along pretty well, even if their meetings had been fairly brief (and once a bit creepy on Sebastian's part, yet he couldn't really bring himself to hold it against him). The only problem for him at this point was that he was entirely unsure of what he should say, how to start a conversation with Sebastian. He had decided that texting him would probably be best. It would give the other man his number, allowing him to easily contact him as well, and it was lower commitment and made him feel less uneasy than showing up at his home would. Still, though, even once he made the decision to text him, there was the matter of picking the right words.

' _Hey, it's Hunter. I found your message on my door.'_

No. That wouldn't work as an opening. A few days had passed and it wasn't like he hadn't been home in that time.

' _Hi Sebastian, it's Hunter. Sorry I didn't message you earlier, I've been a bit busy.'_

It was a lie, really, but Sebastian didn't have to know that, and Hunter felt fairly sure that he wouldn't call him out on it regardless.

' _Have you been up to anything interesting?'_

No. That sounded weird.

' _We should get together sometime.'_

That felt like he was coming on too strong.

Some of his messages ended up being several lines long and he had to analyze every word to make sure they were all necessary, not wanting to feel like he was sending Sebastian a novel. Some of them came out sounding far too professional, like he was contacting a business partner instead of a friend.

In the end, he sent something fairly simple: _'Hey Sebastian, this is Hunter. Sorry you haven't heard from me before now, I've been pretty busy. How've you been?'_

The reply was fairly quick, coming in about ten minutes later, making Hunter feel a little bit bad for having waited so long for something that appeared to be really no big deal: _'no harm done, we've all been there. i'm good. busy as hell, too, actually.'_

And just like that, Hunter felt a whole lot better about the whole thing. Sebastian's reply was casual (and so was his typing style, but Hunter couldn't really fault him for that) and it reminded him of the fact that this was, indeed, no big deal. Sebastian was just a nice guy that he was going to be friends with, nothing more to it than that. He laughed at himself a bit for it, since it had been so long since he had gone through the process of making friends. He was just a bit out of practice.

To Sebastian: _'Too busy to hang out at some point?'_

From Sebastian: _'never. I can always make time.'  
'also… I'd be lying if I said that none of my "business" was actually partying with other law students.'  
'…but I'm not getting stupid drunk.'  
'just to be clear. I'm not an alcoholic. I barely drink.'  
'they're bad influences. I mean, can't blame them, everyone's always stressed, but.'_

Hunter waited for a little bit to see if there were going to be any more messages after that, but it appeared that Sebastian was done. He wasn't sure what it was, but there was definitely something comforting about the fact that Sebastian seemed to be concerned with making his level of alcohol intake clear. It made him think that maybe just maybe he wasn't the only one who was a little bit concerned about what the other thought of them.

To Sebastian: _'Makes sense. I'd probably drink more if I had to spend more time in college. Anyways, if you can spare some time from your dearest drinking buddies, I think that I might have to take you up on watching Parks and Recreation.'_

From Sebastian: _'sounds like a wonderful idea. you'll be a better person for it. ;)'  
'when are you free to do that?'_

To Sebastian: _'I'm free just about whenever. Most of my evenings are pretty open.'_

He had to hold himself back from saying that he was free that night, feeling a bit self-conscious again and not wanting to seem over eager. He also had to hope that Sebastian wouldn't call him out on the fact that he clearly had no social life to speak of, seeing as 'my evenings are pretty open' could mean very little else.

From Sebastian: _'alright, cool, cool. I can make whenever work. doing anything thursday?'_

To Sebastian: _'No, Thursday should be fine for me. I get off at five, so anytime after about six or so should be fine.'_

From Sebastian: _'great. if you want, I could bring over some food.'  
'you know, to make it a date, of course.'_

To Sebastian: _'You only wish I'd date you.'_

From Sebastian: _'oh, you know it.'_

To Sebastian: _'but yes, it would be great of you to bring food.'_

From Sebastian: _'you got it, boss.'  
'see you thursday.'_

Hunter wasn't exactly sure why it was he felt comfortable enough with him to tease him like that, though he supposed it helped Sebastian had started it. Still, though, in the past he had never really been much of a playful person (which felt bad to think, it felt like he was a hardass who felt no joy, but still, it was true, though of course not to that extent).


	3. Chapter 3

The next few days passed without incident. He had had a brief conversation with Sebastian over the phone when the other man had called asking about what kind of food he'd be interested in, but aside from that most of the week went by in his ordinary process of work and home.

Thursday, though, seemed to drag on, the way time always managed to stretch itself out when you were waiting for something. Hunter wouldn't admit it out loud – he barely admitted it to himself, really – but he was pretty excited to have Sebastian over. When he had graduated, most of his friends ended up leaving DC or he lost touch with them in the rush of trying to find employment post-graduation, meaning that he was living a fairly solitary life aside from work friends and attending work functions, and he wasn't sure that that really counted. So having Sebastian over was a welcome change of pace.

The knock on the door came at a quarter after six, Sebastian entering the apartment with a smile on his face and a brown paper bag held in one arm. "Hey," he greeted, "Where should I put this?"

"Do you want to eat and then start watching, or just eat while we watch?" Hunter asked him.

"Eh, doesn't really matter to me," he said with a shrug. "Eating while we watch is fine by me."

"Alright," he said, nodding and leading Sebastian further into the apartment back into the living room. "Just put it down on the coffee table, I'll go get plates."

"Great," Sebastian said, setting the bag down and taking a seat on the couch. He opened up the bag, starting to pull out the Chinese food containers (it had felt like a safe thing, since most people generally found Chinese takeout fairly agreeable) as Hunter went into the kitchen. Once he heard his footsteps returning to the room, he asked, "I didn't really think too much about this, but do you have, like, a smart TV? Like, one that uses wifi?"

Hunter furrowed his brow slightly at the question. "Um, no?" he said. "I don't think so, anyways."

"Ah. That might be a small problem," he said, glancing back towards the entertainment center. "No Xbox?"

"No," he said, chuckling softly and shaking his head. "I'm not a teenage boy."

Sebastian shrugged. "Felt worth asking," he said. "It seems like straight guys of all ages are obsessed with games where they get to pretend to shoot a gun."

"Why pretend to shoot a gun when I've already done the real thing plenty of times?"

"Hey, you might not be a hundred percent boring after all," he said, an amused grin on his face. "Why have you shot a gun plenty of times? Are you secretly an assassin? Ooh, that's why I woke up in your apartment, isn't it? It's not because I came here drunk because I thought this was my ex's apartment, no, it's because you brought me here to kill me. But then I was so charming, you couldn't kill me."

Hunter just laughed softly at him and rolled his eyes. "Are you done?" he asked.

"If I must be," he said, still grinning.

"Good," he said, getting to his feet. "It's really not a big deal. I was in the army."

"Really," Sebastian said with his eyebrows raised, looking a bit more impressed than he should have been. "Huh. Well, that's cool. I guess."

Hunter shrugged. "You said your family goes into law? Well, my family does the military," he said with a soft chuckle, shrugging. "I'll be right back. I've got a laptop and an HDMI cord; that should do just fine, right?"

"Yeah, I think so," he said with a nod, leaning back against the couch cushions.

"Great," he said, going into his room and grabbing his laptop. It took a little bit of digging around to find his HDMI cord, since he barely used it, but within a few minutes he was back in the living room.

Sebastian took the laptop and cable from him, going over to the TV to hook it up. "Man, this brings back memories," he said with a soft laugh. Glancing back at Hunter, he elaborated, "While I was in San Francisco for undergrad, when I wasn't drinking, I made a habit of breaking into lecture halls and rigging my computer up so me and my friends could watch movies on the big projector screens."

"Sounds like fun," he said with a soft laugh, shaking his head. "However, San Francisco? Seriously? Like, no offense, but you make fun of me for being super straight, but you are literally the gayest person I have ever met."

"Haven't met a lot of gay people, have you?" he asked, opening up the laptop.

"Well, no, but that's not the point."

"Sure it is," Sebastian said with a small shrug. "I'm just saying, I don't do show tunes or rainbows. Also, you live in a city that has Pride festivals every year. You must not get out much."

"I don't," he said with a small shrug.

"Eh, that's alright. The outside world is shit," he said with a small shrug. "What's your Netflix password?"

"I don't have one," Hunter said, shaking his head.

There was a moment of silence as Sebastian just stared at him, shaking his head slowly. "You don't have Netflix," he said. "I really thought that it couldn't get worse. You do not have Netflix. I'm sorry, Hunter, but I'm not even sure that you are a real human being."

"I have cable, I don't really see much point in paying for Netflix on top of that," he said with a shrug.

"But Netflix and cable have completely different things on them," he said. "More movies, old seasons of shows, etc. And with the convenience of being able to watch whatever you want, whenever you damn well please."

"Sorry to disappoint," he said with a small shrug.

"You'll learn," Sebastian said, shaking his head and turning his attention to the computer for a moment, typing something in. "The world has failed you. But I am here to help. I'll show you."

Hunter rolled his eyes, watching as Sebastian navigated through Netflix to bring them to the first episode of Parks and Recreation. Once it got going, Sebastian came back to sit beside him on the couch, taking his shoes off before kicking his feet up on the coffee table.

"Must you do that?" Hunter asked, gesturing to his feet.

"It's more comfortable," he said with a shrug as he leaned back, starting to eat.

"It's rude," he replied, shaking his head.

"Eh, same difference," he said with a soft laugh, but didn't protest further as he brought his feet back down to the floor.

"That makes absolutely no sense, you realize that, right?"

Sebastian chuckled softly, shaking his head. "Hey. Pay attention," he said, gesturing up at the TV. "I mean, granted, the first season isn't really that good, but you still need to watch it to get to know that characters and everything."

"Fine, fine," he said with a soft chuckle, shaking his head.

"Don't sass me," he said.

As it turned out, they didn't do a whole lot of paying attention. Something one of the characters said would make one of them remember something that they'd then say, launching them back into conversation for a bit. Sebastian would shush them at important moments so that they wouldn't really miss anything, spending plenty of the evening just getting to know each other with the show on as a backdrop to entertain them in the lulls between conversations (though they also got distracted for long stretches of time as well, the TV asking them "Are you still watching Parks and Recreation?" for a while before being noticed more than once).

Hunter found out little things about Sebastian that were for the most part pretty insignificant, but still helped him to get a fuller picture of what the other man was like. Sebastian was apparently the youngest in his family, with an older sister who had escaped becoming a lawyer by way of gallivanting through Europe and for the most part ignoring her responsibilities (he said this very fondly, and Hunter couldn't help but smile at how clear it was in the way he spoke that he loved his sister). Though he "did not do show tunes" as he had stated earlier, he admitted that he did do show choir in high school. He grew up in small towns, so once he gained any amount of independence he found his way to big cities (Paris, San Francisco, DC) and never turned back.

And for his part, Hunter did share some things about himself: how he had never actually been outside of the United States, and DC was the biggest city he'd even been in and he wasn't really sure that he liked it but it was home now. He sang sometimes, too, but never in front of anyone else (which of course lead to another joke from Sebastian about his 'fragile masculine ego'). He told him a little bit about his time with the army, how he had never seen any kind of battle besides simulations in training and instead was stationed in Hawaii, which sounded great in theory but instead was mostly humid and lonely.

He confided in Sebastian something he'd never really told anyone else: the fact that he had felt trapped when going into the army, feeling like it was the only option and not having any involvement with the military would have been disappointing his family. He felt a bit awkward afterwards, feeling like he had gotten too deep and personal for their level of friendship, until Sebastian assured him that he could relate. He said that he'd felt pressured into the life he was living now. He wasn't sure what he wanted out of his time on earth and part of the reason he was alright with doing law school was because it was a good way to put off actually having to think about his life.

And just like that it was somehow suddenly ten o'clock and Tesla was curled up between them and Sebastian's feet had landed back on the coffee table.

"I should probably get going," Sebastian said as he saw the clock, letting his feet back down. "I've got things to do and you probably have work in the morning, so I should get out of your hair."

Part of Hunter wanted to protest that it was fine, Sebastian wasn't bothering him and he could stay a bit longer, but at the same time he did recognize the fact that he was right – it was starting to get late, so it would be best if they called it a night. "Alright," he said with a small nod, giving Sebastian a smile. "But we have to do this again sometime."

"Of course we do," he said with a soft laugh, getting to his feet and gesturing up at the television. "We still have the entire series to get through."

"Oh, right, of course. My bad," he said with a fond roll of his eyes.

"I'll forgive you for that mistake," Sebastian said with a small grin as he made his way over to the door. "I'll text you about meeting up again."

* * *

Evenings like that first one became the routine for them, every Thursday night.

Sebastian would always arrive with some kind of food (he didn't very often repeat any restaurants he brought food from, unless Hunter asked him to bring something specific), and he would always refuse to allow Hunter to pay him back for it. And just like it was routine for Sebastian to provide their dinner, it became routine for him to set up the computer to play the show on the TV, even though Hunter was just as capable of doing it himself – while he wasn't great with computers and Sebastian clearly knew a few things about them that he did not, he was not such a luddite that he didn't know how to plug in a cable to a TV, thank you very much.

And then, as time went on, it became more often than every Thursday. It became whenever they felt like seeing each other. And it became more than just meeting up to watch Parks and Recreation. Whenever one of them had had a particularly bad day or a particularly good day, or if they had had an average day but still wanted to see each other anyways, they would text and Sebastian would show up at his door soon after.

(One afternoon, in fact, Hunter's sister had sent him the name of a girl that was, she had gushed, "absolutely perfect" for him, his future wife, she guaranteed. So of course he had called Sebastian over and together they had looked through the girl's Facebook profile, eventually going as far as working together to start a conversation with her over the site's messenger. Sebastian had laughed through the whole thing and made some snarky comment about "heterosexual mating rituals.")

Hunter at some point in this process came to the realization that Sebastian was quickly becoming his best friend.

One night, he came home to find that Sebastian had already allowed himself in and was making dinner, chattering nonsense at Tesla who was perched on the counter watching him.

"He's not allowed on the counter, you know," Hunter commented as he saw them.

Sebastian startled slightly at the sound of his voice, the sizzling of the food he was cooking apparently loud enough that he hadn't heard him come in. "I don't see why not. He likes it up here and he's very polite," he said once he recovered, chuckling softly and gesturing over to the cat.

"He likes to knock things over," he said, stepping over to pet Tesla. "And he burns his paws on the stove the second you turn your back."

"Well then, easy solution," he said with a laugh, shrugging. "Just don't turn your back. Maybe that's your whole problem with him, you don't pay him enough attention. He's needy, Hunt."

"Oh, right, my bad," he said, shaking his head and trying not to think too much about the fact that apparently they were at the point of calling each other by nicknames. "I only feed him and play with him and let him sleep in my bed with me."

"If what he gets is anything like what I got, he's just as good sleeping anywhere else," he said with a soft chuckle.

"Shut up about that already," he said with a laugh, rolling his eyes. "And yes, I cuddle with the damn cat. Or at least, I let him cuddle me."

"So is that the secret?" Sebastian asked him with a grin. "Do I have to just cuddle with you forcibly and make you accept it?"

"Don't even try," he said, shaking his head.

"Too late," he hummed. "I'm plotting."

Hunter chuckled, rolling his eyes. "Please don't," he said.

"Too late," he repeated. "Nobody cuddles me enough."

"That sounds like it might be your fault," he said. "From what you've told me, you aren't doing too great in terms of relationships."

"That is not my fault at all and you are wounding me by bringing it up," Sebastian replied, though the amused look on his face made it clear that he wasn't really upset. "And hell, I thought I was doing pretty well with the last guy, until, you know, I walked in on him being spitroasted."

"Okay, fine, fine. Dirty pool," he said with a soft chuckle, shaking his head. "And no, that was definitely not your fault." He assumed. They hadn't really talked about that boyfriend (or, really, any of Sebastian's other past romances – or lack thereof – beyond vague references, if he were being totally honest) since the night they had met. "Anyways, point is, if you wanted someone to cuddle, I'm sure you could find someone."

"Maybe I'll just put out an ad on Craigslist," he said, chuckling and shaking his head. "Attractive male seeking cuddling partner. Experience preferred."

"Please don't actually do that," Hunter said with a laugh. "I can think of very few worse ways to get cuddled. I'd hate it if you got murdered."

Sebastian grinned at him. "Is it because you care about me?" he teased.

"Oh, shut up, you," he said, rolling his eyes. "It's not like we haven't made it abundantly clear by now that we care about each other.

"It's still nice to hear," he said with a hum. "I'm man enough to admit that I wouldn't want you to be murdered because I care about you."

"That's a sentence you should never have to say in your life," he said with a laugh, shaking his head.

Sebastian shrugged. "What can you do, right?" he said. "But hey, maybe you don't care about me. You'd rather me risk life and limb than to just cuddle me."

"I never said that," he said.

"So what you're saying is I still have a chance," he said as he glanced back at him to give him a wink.

Before Hunter could come up with a witty comeback, Sebastian was already moving on, taking the rice and stir fry he had been working on and plating it.

"Either that or you have to help me draft my Craigslist ad," Sebastian added with a soft laugh, leading them back into the living room once they both had their food. "I need to strike the right balance of honesty and appealing to strangers." He set his plate down on the coffee table before grabbing the laptop to set it back up.

Hunter noticed vaguely that Sebastian took longer in navigating to the episode they were on in Netflix than he normally did, taking long enough in fact that it necessitated Hunter pushing Tesla away from Sebastian's plate multiple times, but he didn't really think all too much about it beyond that. Soon enough he was settled onto the couch with him and the show was starting and it didn't seem like anything to be too concerned about.

Later that evening, when Sebastian was long gone and Hunter was preparing himself for bed, he checked Facebook, as he made a habit of doing each night, just in case he ran the risk of missing anything important. A red notification bubble popped up, and informed him that _Sebastian Smythe has accepted your friend request._

To Sebastian: _'You know, you could have just looked me up and added me on Facebook.'_

From Sebastian: _'what, and risk rejection? you should know by know that my heart can't handle that'_

To Sebastian: _'Oh, shut up.'_

From Sebastian: _'okay, in all fairness, I actually didn't add you from my account because I didn't know your last name. which is kind of crazy considering how it's been a couple months now since we met.'_

' _almost got it the day we were flirting with that girl. but you never went on your own profile. rude.'  
'but you know what else is crazy? we are living in the year of our lord 2015 and we took this long to be friends on facebook.'_

To Sebastian: _'Okay, I guess you've got a point there.'_

From Sebastian: ' _damn right I do. now isn't it past your bedtime, Clarington?'_

To Sebastian: _'Didn't waste much time putting that new knowledge to use, huh?'_

From Sebastian: _'that would be a waste. and you didn't answer. it's totally past your bedtime, isn't it?'_

To Sebastian: _'Shut up, Smythe.'_

From Sebastian: _'sweet dreams, Clarington.'_


	4. Chapter 4

Things were good. Hunter was feeling better about where he was at than he had in a while, Sebastian pulling him out of his rut and making even doing something as ordinary as just eating dinner and chatting seem almost exciting.

But then, just as quickly as their friendship bloomed, it seemed to be quickly slipping out of Hunter's hands.

It started with Sebastian cancelling on him one Thursday evening, citing a super busy week and just needing to relax. Hunter didn't think too much of it at the time, but then it kept happening.

Sebastian couldn't hang out on Saturday afternoon because one of his friends needed him to help her move.

He was busy on Tuesday because apparently his sister had some sort of crisis that he needed to help her get through over the phone.

Friday was a no-go for him, too, because another one of his friends was having a party that he'd feel rude skipping out on (and Hunter was too polite when he received this excuse to even attempt to just invite himself along).

He did show up the following Thursday, but all the while it was like he wasn't even there. He seemed kind of distracted or distant, and when Hunter tried to ask him about it, his only explanation was just that they had gotten to some of his favorite parts of the series so he was more invested in watching.

It wasn't like he thought that everything was perfect in his newfound friendship with Sebastian. He would be lying if he said anything to that effect.

Yes, they got along well, but the fact of the matter was still that they had both lived fairly different lives that had led them to become two very different people. After a few conversations early on had turned into arguments, they agreed that politics was a subject they should steer clear of, and when more liberal topics came up on Parks and Recreation, they tended to gracefully steer clear of saying anything of their views on the matters at hand.

Sebastian was a much more carefree person than he was. Though it was likely hyperbole to say so, but the best way that Hunter could think to put it was that he seemed to thrive on chaos, in a way that made him nervous to see what Sebastian's apartment would look like (though, to be fair, he had once reamed Hunter out over the fact that he still needed a friend's help to do laundry, saying that it was not cute for a guy to not know how to do basic things necessary for everyday life, and that he "needs to get over himself and his antiquated gender roles," so there was clearly some level of ability that Sebastian had when it came to homemaking).

Over time he had worn Hunter down on the topic of him putting his feet up on the table, and he frequently attempted to give some of whatever he was eating to Tesla. And speaking of eating, when they would use plates, he didn't mind leaving them sitting and not once did he offer to clean up after them.

He was way too blasé about things like his future career and any possible bodily harm. This probably wasn't _really_ a big deal, but Hunter cared enough about the guy that it was frustrating to have him make jokes about making a special request for the "sketchiest, murderiest Uber driver available" when he didn't feel like taking the Metro home.

In short, he was a bit infuriating. He was a clear antithesis to Hunter's constant need for control, how he needed everything in order to feel completely at ease.

But still, he didn't think that anything was that wrong with them. Sure, they had their differences, but for the most part they got along really well, and what they had in common made up for where they didn't see eye to eye. There certainly had been no fight or disagreement that he could think of, nothing to explain them going from near constant contact and frequent meetings to barely speaking or seeing each other for a couple of weeks.

For a bit, Hunter tried to make himself relax about it. He tried to be a reasonable, non-paranoid person and convince himself that no, Sebastian wasn't avoiding him and no, Sebastian didn't dislike him, and yes, Sebastian was probably just a busy person who, unlike him, had plenty of friends and a lot going on in his life that meant he wasn't always going to be able to hang out when Hunter wanted to.

But eventually he really couldn't convince himself of that any longer, and he knew that he needed to do something.

To Sebastian: _'Hey, are you busy right now?'_

It was a baby step, yes. It wasn't like he hadn't reached out to Sebastian earlier on – he had sent plenty of messages, some invitations to hang out and some just random attempts at conversation starters, but as the days passed the number of these messages that would sit without replies grew larger. But the difference with this message, of course, was that he wasn't going to just let it go this time.

Twenty minutes went by and he got no reply.

To Sebastian: _'Should I take that as a yes?'_

In spite of his better judgement, he was willing to be a bit annoying here. Though he wouldn't really admit it, he had grown attached enough to Sebastian that at this point he was a bit terrified of losing him, as tacky and touchy-feely as that felt (he could already hear the other man making fun of him for it in his head).

He sent a few more messages that went unanswered before something occurred to him: the key to Sebastian's apartment. Though he had never used it and he had, in fact, never even been to Sebastian's apartment, the fact was that he still had it. He had his address and all it would take was a train ride across town to find him where he couldn't ignore him.

And so he did. It took a little bit of navigating and looking clueless and asking strangers where exactly he was, but he ended up at Sebastian's door. He knocked on the door at first, figuring that that might be a bit more polite than just barging in, if he could help it.

When there was no answer, he knocked again.

Nothing.

He sighed to himself, hoping that all that meant was that Sebastian simply wasn't home at the moment, nothing more sinister than that – if he could be as little paranoid in this whole situation as possible, that would probably be ideal.

Sure enough, when he fished the key from his pocket and let himself into the apartment, it appeared that he was the only one there. He closed the door behind him and looked around, taking in the sight of the place. It was neater than he would have expected it to be, though there was also a notable lack of much of anything in the apartment. He had enough furniture and everything so that it was livable and also good enough to have guests, but it fell somewhere short of what Hunter would typically call a home. Still, though, it felt right for Sebastian. A few papers scattered on whatever surface was available, but not in a way that felt like a mess. It was the kind of organized chaos that Sebastian injected into his life, and Hunter felt certain that if he were to need anything, he'd know exactly where to find it.

He still felt a bit wrong being here without Sebastian, especially never having been here before, but, well, Sebastian _had_ given him his key, so Hunter felt like it was alright to remind himself that he wasn't really doing anything wrong. Even if Sebastian hadn't said much of anything about him coming to visit his apartment since giving him the key, there still had to be some kind of unspoken invitation, right?

Still, though, he wasn't about to make himself _too_ comfortable. As curious as he could be sometimes about Sebastian and his life (especially in the most recent days where he suddenly seemed to want little to do with him), he wasn't about to go poking around in his things, or venture anywhere deeper in his apartment than he needed to. So he just sat down on his couch, settling in to wait.

He pulled out his phone to check and make sure that he hadn't missed a message from Sebastian while he had been running around trying to get here; if he _had_ received a message, after all, he might want to leave in order to save face. Sure enough, though, nothing. He spent a little while, he wasn't sure how long exactly, sitting there on the couch, doing nothing in particular on his phone, just needing something to kill the time. Until, finally, the door opened, signaling Sebastian's arrival.

He looked up to see Sebastian walking in, and he was… He was not alone. In fact, the guy walking in with him barely got through the door before kissing Sebastian again, and suddenly Hunter very much wished that he had not come here after all.

For a moment, Hunter almost thought that he might be able to sit there and then get out undetected – the two men before him appear to be pretty well focused on each other, Sebastian guiding them in the direction of what Hunter assumed had to be the bedroom. It took a few moments of loud, sloppy kissing before either of them noticed that they were not quite alone, the guy pulling away from Sebastian and looking over in Hunter's direction. He pointed over at him, asking, "Who's that? You said you lived alone."

It took a long moment for Sebastian to realize what was going on, blinking at the guy with a confused expression for a few seconds before turning and looking in the direction he was pointing. At that point, his face went from mildly confused to almost overwhelmingly perplexed. "I do live alone," he said slowly, looking at Hunter with a deep set frown.

"Then who is he?" the guy asked.

Sebastian shook his head slightly. It had become abundantly clear to Hunter that he was drunk, something in his expression, in his mannerisms, calling back to the night when they had first met. It seemed odd to Hunter that he would be this level of intoxicated (and also apparently having found a partner) when it was still light out, but then again he had never been much of a drinker anyways. "Hunter?" he asked after a pause, taking a couple of steps towards him. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm…" he started and then trailed off, feeling for a moment about as confused as Sebastian looked. Now that he was here in this situation, having come over here and, especially, having set up camp in Sebastian's living room felt ridiculous. There had to have been another way to go about this. Sure, nothing had worked up to that point, but still. This had clearly been a bad idea. "I don't know, I just… I wanted to talk to you."

Sebastian rubbed a hand over his face, letting out a long breath. "You shouldn't…" He didn't finish the sentence, but Hunter could think of plenty of ways it could have gone, and Sebastian was right; he _shouldn't_ have.

"I know, I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head and getting to his feet.

Before he can get out any further apologies or excuse himself, the guy looks at them with a frown. "Who is he?" he repeated, sounding a bit like a petulant child that was being ignored, clearly just as drunk as Sebastian was, if not more so. "Is he going to join us? Sebastian…"

Hunter just shook his head to himself slightly, going towards the door. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come, I'll talk to you sometime later, Sebastian," he said. "Bye."

"Hunter…" he said slowly, his frown deepening and his brows furrowed like he wanted to protest, wanted to say something else but just couldn't find the right words.

"Bye, talk to you later," he repeated, though at this point part of him wasn't entirely sure whether or not that was true. Sebastian, and his friendship with him, was likely slipping out of his hands.

"Bye," Sebastian said back.

As he stepped out the door and reached to close it behind him, he could see that the stranger had approached Sebastian again and was kissing his neck, while Sebastian's eyes were still following Hunter right up until the moment the door fell shut.

* * *

Hunter didn't really expect to hear from Sebastian after the run-in at his apartment, especially not in the next few days after. It had been little more than an awkward reminder of how very different the two of them were; maybe Sebastian had realized that and felt too awkward to just say so. Maybe that was for the best.

It wasn't a fun realization to make, but he told himself that it was for the best that he acknowledged it and accepted it. Sure, it had been fun to hang out with Sebastian. Sure, they got along pretty well. Sure, they hadn't even finished watching Parks and Recreation together.

(He wasn't sure why, but that last fact almost hurt most of all.)

But the fact of the matter was that maybe they just weren't meant to work out in the long term, and maybe he had seen too much into the relationship to begin with.

So he tried to move on.

Netflix had now taken a spot on his browser's page of frequently visited sites. And even though just the existence of Netflix on his computer reminded him of Sebastian (especially considering the fact that the account they'd been using was Sebastian's, after all), he couldn't help but think that maybe that was the thing to do. Countless people he'd talked to or saw on Facebook talked about how great Netflix was, what a way to kill time it was. And while he'd never needed that before, always having plenty to do, he was now in a spot where he had a Sebastian-shaped void to fill.

As much as part of him was curious about what was going to happen in Parks and Rec, he couldn't really bring himself to watch that. So he spent the better part of an hour looking through what was on Netflix, eventually settling on Bob's Burgers.

In the next few days after that, he watched several things: a lot of Bob's Burgers, Rent, Legally Blonde, Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Until, eventually, his phone buzzed:

From Sebastian: _'the next time you log into netflix, you'll see that I set up a separate profile for you on the account. your shitty taste in movies is making my recommendations weird.'_

It wasn't much. He knew that it wasn't much. In fact, it was an insult to his tastes, and depending on how he chose to read it, it could sound pretty cold. But he liked to think that he was pretty good at reading Sebastian (his recent difficulties aside), and so he decided the message had to be more playful than hurtful.

To Sebastian: _'Didn't think about that, my bad. But thank you.'_

From Sebastian: _'no problem. but seriously? legally blonde? was the goal to make me want to make fun of you?'_

To Sebastian: _'Hey, it's a good movie. And I'd think you'd be into it, Mr. Future Lawyer.'_

From Sebastian: _'that's not how it works.'_

To Sebastian: _'Still. It's a great movie.'_

And the conversation ended there. Hunter kept waiting for a bit, expecting a reply, but eventually he came to the conclusion that that was the end of the conversation. Even though he'd wished that they'd talked longer, he couldn't bring himself to be too upset about it – it was a better conversation than they'd had in a bit now. It felt natural, the way things had gone between them earlier on in their friendship. And no matter how weird Sebastian was being about him, he wasn't going to take away from that.

At the end of the day, though, one good conversation could only amount to so much. He still found himself sitting on his couch with his laptop in front of him, watching Bob's Burgers alone as the evening wore away into nighttime.

Cutting into the relative silence of the living room came a small meow, followed by Tesla hopping up onto the couch. He looked at Hunter for a moment, wide eyes before moving to sit by his feet, rolling over onto his back.

He was fairly certain that it was a coincidence, but Tesla had ended up settling down right where Sebastian had usually sat when he came over.

"I know," he said, reaching over and scratching behind the cat's ear. "I miss him, too."


	5. Chapter 5

After a certain point, Hunter was no longer counting on Sebastian coming back to being an active part of his life. That did not mean that he liked it, but he was accepting it. He stopped counting the days, and when Thursdays came and went without Sebastian coming over to his apartment, it stopped feeling like something that had broken and he needed to fix (he had by now come to terms with the fact that maybe he just _couldn't_ fix it, and that was alright).

Right about the time that he was considering deleting Sebastian from his phone and mailing his spare key back to him, though, it all changed again.

He was returning home from work, just as he usually did, but something about it felt a bit off in a way that he couldn't quite put his finger on; that feeling in the back of your mind, maybe dread, that you got when you felt like something was about to happen though you had no reason to suspect so. Stepping into the living room of his apartment, Hunter's eyes were drawn to the door out to his balcony. His heart started to pound as he realized that the sliding door out onto his patio was open.

He wracked his brain for a moment, trying to remember if he had gone out there any time recently that he could have just forgotten to shut the door afterwards (he knew it was ridiculous, he was a very careful person, but still; you had to consider all possibilities). Suddenly wishing that he had some kind of weapon handy to protect himself as his dad had always advised, he glanced around for something he could improvise instead. Taking a couple steps closer to the balcony door, he could see a foot past where the curtain was pulled back.

Throwing caution to the wind (ignoring his father's voice in his head warning him about making hasty moves – after all, if he had a home invader, they appeared to be content to be out on the balcony instead of stealing anything, which felt safer), he stepped over the threshold to go outside.

Sebastian was there, because _of course_ he would be, settled in the very same seat that Hunter had been sitting in when they first met.

For a moment they looked at each other, Hunter trying to process the fact that he had been feeling all but phased out by Sebastian and yet now here he was, entering his apartment like things were just as usual. He couldn't quite tell what the look on Sebastian's face meant, but if he were being honest he would admit that, to some degree, the other man looked somewhat reminiscent of a scared animal, and that told him that if a conversation – a real, productive conversation – was going to happen here, he would have to be the first one to say anything.

So he sat down in the chair across from Sebastian, letting out a long breath. "What are you doing here?" he asked, careful to make sure his tone didn't come across as being too aggressive, lest he scare Sebastian off. In the past, he hadn't seemed like the kind of person to be too skittish, but if he had learned anything recently it was that things could change.

"You deserve an explanation," Sebastian replied, glancing away from him for a moment to look out at the street below that.

Hunter nodded. "Yeah, that would be appreciated," he said. "I kind of thought that we had a good thing going."

"We did," he said with a firm nod, sounding very sure in a way that did more than it should've to ease Hunter's worries about having done something wrong. "Too good."

"What?" he asked, furrowing his brows. "If you're about to pull some, like, 'oh, I don't deserve good things' crap, I'm not going to hear it."

"No," Sebastian said, shaking his head. "That not was it was. I just…" He sighed, pausing for a moment before speaking again. "I was trying to do a detox."

"A detox? What would you be—"

Sebastian cut him off, letting out a long breath. "I was trying to get _you_ out of my system," he said. "Because this whole thing went way too far for me way too fast and I was fucking falling in love with you and you're straight and I'm not going to be _that_ guy." Hunter was both grateful and bothered by how upfront and candid Sebastian could be at times; he wasn't going to sugarcoat this or talk around it.

He had to pause for a moment, just looking at Sebastian and trying to process the words he had just said. He thought about the last few times they had met up, trying to look at them through the lens of 'Sebastian was falling in love with me'. "Oh," he said, momentarily at a loss for anything else to say.

"Yeah, oh," he said, sighing and shaking his head. While his words were no doubt meant to be a little sharp they came across with no edge to them, instead sounding mostly tired and maybe a little bit sensitive. "It started feeling like you were doing shit on purpose, like that girl your sister sent you to try and get you to date? Yeah. But I know you're just your own brand of clueless, and you're not that big of an ass. So…. I just thought that if I could spend some time away from you, it would go away or something."

"Did it work?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

Sebastian let out a laugh, shaking his head. "Of course it didn't," he said. "It just made it worse. That's why I started going out again. Not a lot or anything, like I used to, but just… Enough to try and get you out of my mind. Didn't work. Wasn't even fun, either, if we're being honest."

"Sorry," he said.

"Don't be," he said with a shrug. "I'm the sorry one. For, you know, developing feelings for you and then… everything that happened afterward."

"It's alright," he said.

"You don't have to say that," Sebastian said. "I'm a big boy, I can take being told I'm an ass. Especially for the whole, you know, showing up with a hookup."

"You didn't know that I would be there," he said.

Sebastian shrugged. "Alright, yeah, I guess I didn't, but still," he said. "It was awkward and awful. Especially since I _did_ see your messages. I just ignored them."

"Which I'm not upset about anymore now that I know why it was," he said.

"But that doesn't make it less of a shitty thing to have done," he said. "I didn't apologize to you after or anything."

Hunter shook his head. "It's alright, don't worry about it anymore."

"Okay," he said, nodding slowly. He didn't say anything for a moment, just looking out across the street, his mouth a hard line. "I still want to be friends with you, you know, start hanging out again. I promise I won't make it weird or anything, but I get it if you'll be uncomfortable anyways."

Hunter had to think about it for a second. Not because he was uncomfortable about the idea of being friends with someone who had feelings for him; he had had female friends in the same situation in the past, and to be perfectly honest he had reached a point where he didn't see much of a difference (though, at the same time, he acknowledged that at some point in the past he _would_ have been that kind of ass). It was more that… He didn't really want things to be any different with Sebastian. Ever since they had first met, Sebastian had sometimes hit on him and that was just the way things were with them. It hadn't meant anything to him, had always assumed that he hadn't meant it (and he probably still hadn't, any feelings aside).

"Okay," he said after a second. "It's fine, I don't care."

"Are you sure?" he asked, and the fact that it was so clear that Sebastian cared about not overstepping his boundaries sealed his decision for him, as if he had even considered backing down.

"Absolutely," Hunter said with a nod. "I'm not going to kick you out just because of something you didn't really have control over."

"Okay, good," he said with a nod, letting out a soft breath of relief. "Thank you."

"As if I was going to say anything else," he said.

Sebastian laughed, shaking his head. "Hey, you could have," he said.

"But I didn't," he said. "And hey, just, promise me one thing?"

"What?" he asked, frowning slightly at him.

"Don't, like, filter yourself, okay?" he said. "You don't have to water yourself down just because you feel like you need to tiptoe around me. You don't need to."

Sebastian smiled softly at him, nodding. "Yeah, I guess I could agree to that."

"You better," he said with a laugh. "I think you might be a bit boring if you weren't so crude all the time."

"Oh really?" he asked, laughing and shaking his head. " _I_ would be boring, Mr. Boring Accountant? I'm pretty sure you've cornered the damn market on boring."

"And yet you still like me anyways," he said, regretting his choice of words once they were out of his mouth. He hadn't meant it like _that_ , but still…

"Eh, I have poor tastes and everyone knows it," Sebastian said with a laugh, shrugging it off easily.

And just like that, everything felt a little bit more right again.

* * *

It was almost like they had never had any time apart at all. After they had had that conversation, they immediately fell right back into their routine of Netflix-watching and takeout-eating and hanging out. It felt so natural again. Sure, there was the elephant in the corner of Sebastian's feelings for him, but it never came up and it was fairly easy to ignore. Everything was fine between them. And god, was Hunter glad.

And Tesla, of course, didn't seem to hate it, either. For reasons that, to this day, neither of them had been able to figure out, the cat had seemed to gravitate towards Sebastian.

"So, I've been thinking," Sebastian announced one evening as the credits rolled on an episode of Parks and Recreation, his feet up on the table and Tesla curled up on his lap.

"Really? Impressive," Hunter replied with a grin, chuckling. "I didn't know you could do that."

"Oh, shut up, you," he said, lifting his hand from the cat's back for a moment in order to flip Hunter off. "You know I'm smart as hell."

"How smart _is_ hell?"

"I'm ignoring you," he said. "Anyways. What I was going to say was, I'm thinking about getting a cat."

"Oh, you are?" he asked.

"Yeah," he said, nodding and looking down at Tesla. "I like this guy here, and my apartment gets a little lonely sometimes, so I figure having a cat around wouldn't be half bad, right?"

And Hunter could understand that. It was indeed nice to have Tesla, making sure things never got too quiet and providing company that he sometimes felt starved for (less so when Sebastian was around, but that was neither here nor there).

"So, any plans for where you're going to get a cat?" he asked.

Sebastian shrugged. "I'm not too sure yet. I mean, I know that you got your cat from a friend, so I can't really do that, unless I steal your cat."

"Still not happening."

"Gotta keep asking, just in case you change your mind," he said with a grin.

"Never going to happen," he said with a laugh, shaking his head. "As annoying as he is sometimes, he's my cat and I'm not giving him up. Besides, you can visit him any time you want."

"Fine, fine," Sebastian said with a laugh. "But I guess I have to get a cat of my own. No guarantee he'll be as cool as Tesla, but…"

"Tesla knocks over the trashcan. Always," he said, chuckling and shaking his head.

"It's charming," he said, grinning. "So anyways, I'm not too sure, but I think I'm going to have to go to a shelter or something to find me a cat."

"Surprised you didn't immediately jump to Craigslist," Hunter teased, rolling his eyes.

"Oh, don't think I didn't think about it," he said, giving him a grin. "But the thing is, around here people, like, charge a shit ton for a cat on Craigslist, which they're not supposed to do, by the way, but still. And I don't feel like driving too far to get the cat. But also, eh, I don't know. There's something weird about getting a cat on Craigslist."

"So that's where you draw the line, huh?" he asked with a laugh, shaking his head.

Sebastian shrugged. "Seems like a good place," he said. "I don't know, they could do some weird stuff to the cat before I get it," he said.

"I mean, yeah, I guess so," he said, chuckling. "But fine, yes, I can't disagree. Going to a humane society or something would probably be a good bet."

"Mhm, exactly," he said, humming as he turned his attention back to the television.

He didn't go any further with it, so part of Hunter kind of figured that it might be the kind of thing that eventually got forgotten. After all, Sebastian had struck him so far as the kind of person to come up with ideas spontaneously and then not necessarily follow through on them (though, he also did sometimes go through with them, as evidenced by the fact that he had decided they should watch Parks and Recreation together after meeting once and they _did_ ). He just didn't really see it happening. It wasn't that he didn't think Sebastian would like having a cat, or would not be good at it, but it did seem like the kind of thing that, while Sebastian was an impulsive person, even he would have to put more thought into.


	6. Chapter 6

From Sebastian: _'you have a car, don't you?'_

To Sebastian: _'Yes, I do, why?'_

From Sebastian: _'we're going into Virginia.'_

To Sebastian: _'At risk of sounding like a broken record here, why?'_

From Sebastian: _'I'm getting a cat.'_

Given the fact that Sebastian hadn't really talked to him all that much about his idea to get a cat, Hunter kind of assumed that the idea had come and gone. But at the same time he told himself he should have known better than to assume that. So he invited Sebastian to come over, and soon enough he had the other man at his door.

"So, why do we have to go into Virginia to do this?" Hunter asked him when he got there.

"Okay, yes, there are a couple of rescues and humane societies and that kind of shit in DC, but they're kind of inconvenient and also adoption fees are less once you get out of the city," he said.

"For a guy who is supposed to be rich, you sure care a lot about not spending too much on this cat," he said, shaking his head.

Sebastian shrugged. "It's the principle of the thing, more than anything else," he said. "And it's not like I won't be spending money on this cat. I've already bought some crap. Litterbox, bowls, cat condo, the whole nine yards."

"I guess that's fair," he said with a shrug. "Though I do think that in most of those places, the adoption fee goes towards helping other animals."

"I have no problem with donating money to them later on," he said with a shrug.

"You're such a dumbass," Hunter said with a laugh, rolling his eyes. "So, did you want to go now?"

"If you're not busy," he said, nodding.

So Hunter grabbed his keys and they went down to his building's parking garage.

"Additionally, this was a good excuse to get in your car," Sebastian said with a grin as he settled into the passenger seat. "I think it's weird that I've never even seen it before."

"I guess," he said with a shrug, pulling out his GPS. "I mean, we usually just hang out in my apartment, so there's no real need for it. Do you have an address for the shelter you want to go to?"

"Fair," he said, shrugging. He took the GPS and pulled his phone out of his pocket, typing in the address off of his screen before handing it back to Hunter to put in its holder. The ETA was a bit more than an hour from then, which seemed to him to be a bit ridiculous, even factoring in DC traffic, but if Sebastian was set on going to this place, he wouldn't fight him on it.

And his decision to just drive and not question it turned out to work in his benefit: as it turned out, Sebastian was the kind of person to sing along to the radio. It was something that he had been curious about since Sebastian had initially mentioned it shortly after they had met; he had a background in seeing, being good enough to make captain of his high school's show choir. But he was stubborn enough that he had refused to sing for him at any point since. But the wait was, well, absolutely worth it. Hunter had to listen close to hear him past the radio and the wind in his ears, but even so he could tell that Sebastian had a good voice for it.

It felt so nice, so natural, just sitting in the car with Sebastian, cruising down winding roads with the windows down and the music loud. It made him feel like he might need to invent excuses to get Sebastian to go on road trips – long or short – with him more in the future.

It didn't feel like over an hour had passed when the GPS told him that they had arrived, and he couldn't help but feel a little bit disappointed as they got out of the car and headed into the building.

The women behind the counter (after briefly and unfruitfully trying to hit on both of them) directed them back to look at the animals: dogs down the right hall, and cats and small animals to the left. And to Hunter's surprise, when they stepped behind the doors to go to the animal areas, Sebastian hung a right.

"What are you doing?" he asked him, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't get your tits in a twist, Clarington," he said with a grin, chuckling softly the way he did when he said something purposefully just to annoy Hunter. "I'm just checking them out, I'm not going to get a dog. It's like going to the zoo."

"You're going to get their little doggy hopes up," he said, shaking his head.

"I know, and that's sad, but I'd be remiss if I didn't look at all the wonderful animals," he said.

They spent what was probably an absurdly long time walking through the kennels the dogs were in, especially considering the fact that they were not there for a dog. One of the dogs had markings on its face that made him look like he had eyebrows; Sebastian had insisted that Hunter take a picture of him with the dog, making the same expression as the dog was.

But eventually, Sebastian allowed them to leave the dog area, heading on to the cat room. He spent a bit peeking into each of the boxes they were in, trying to get them to interact with him.

"The sign says that you're not supposed to stick your fingers in the cages with them," Hunter said, glancing over at Sebastian, who was playing with a kitten through the bars of the cage.

Sebastian laughed and shrugged. "That's some bullshit," he said with a shrug. "Look at this little guy, he's having the time of his life."

"Do you think you'd want to get him?" he asked.

"Honestly, I was thinking I was more inclined to get an adult cat," he said. "Just as cute, but harder for the shelter to adopt out, and all that."

That surprised Hunter, for reasons that he couldn't quite figure out. Of course he knew that humane societies tended to encourage people to adopt adult cats, but part of him had assumed that Sebastian would be the kind of guy to want a baby kitten. "Ah. Well, good," he said.

"Mhm," he hummed, pulling his hand back and watching the kitten for a moment before the cat lost interest and returned to playing with what looked like its littermate. "And an adult would be less needy, since I can't be home all the time."

"You've put some thought into this," he commented.

Sebastian shrugged. "I do my best," he said. He had stepped over to another cage, looking at the piece of paper hanging from it. "Oh my god, these labels have their names on them, right? You'll never guess what this guy's name is."

"What is it?" he asked, walking over and looking into the cage. Sitting against the back of it was a large, fluffy (making him look extra big) grey cat who, for lack of a better term, appeared to be _scowling_ out at them.

"Hunter," he said. He turned around to look at him, the grin on his face making it clear how very much amused he was by this fact. "His name is Hunter."

"Of course it fucking is," he said with a chuckle, rolling his eyes.

"He's just as angry as you are," Sebastian said, still laughing softly through his words.

"Please tell me you are not going to get that cat just because he's angry and has my name," he said.

"I'd probably get him just because of his resting bitch face, but he looks like he weighs, like, thirty fucking pounds," he said. "I can't handle that."

"Maybe that's why he's so mad," he said with a laugh.

"Oh, now you're going to make me feel bad for laughing at him," Sebastian said with a laugh, shaking his head.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," he chuckled, shaking his head. "But it seems like a good theory. If I was morbidly obese, I'd probably be pretty upset, too."

"He's not obese, he's just got big bones," he said.

Hunter chuckled, rolling his eyes. "That's the oldest excuse in the book," he said.

"Doesn't make it less true," he said. He moved onto the next cage over, the cat inside small especially in comparison to the hulking Hunter next door. She was an adult cat but you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at her small stature, her fur a calico muted enough that she mostly just looked a bit muddied, especially with the shadows on her as she curled up in the back of the cage.

"Hi there," Sebastian said softly as he looked in at her, sticking his fingers into the cage and wiggling them at her enticingly. She did not move.

"I don't think she's playing hard to get," he said with a small frown, looking in at her.

"She's just a little scared," he said, shaking his head. "It's okay, friend, I'm nice." He glanced over at the label on her cage. "Noelle. Hi Noelle. I'm Sebastian."

Hunter just watched him for a moment with a fond smile, seeing the cat take a small step towards him but ultimately not move much.

Eventually Sebastian moved on from her cage, looking at the other cats in the room. There were a few that he expressed some interest in, including, for a moment, a pair of cats that were bonded to each other and could only be adopted together ("Promise to remind me that I came here for _one_ cat. I can't be that impulsive") as well as a few others. But in the end, he kept coming back to the timid little cat.

He had Hunter go out and get one of the ladies to help him, and they were more than happy to get the cat out of her cage for him to hold.

"She's been here kind of a while now," she explained as she opened the door, ushering the cat out. She curled her up in her arms before handing her over to Sebastian. "We're not entirely sure, but we think she might have gone through some abuse in the past. She's certainly the… shyest of the cats we have here."

Sebastian nodded, gingerly cradling that cat against his chest and petting her chin. "Hi cutie," he murmured to her.

"Okay, spend some time with her, let me know when you're done or if you want to see another cat," the woman told him before leaving them room.

The cat in Sebastian's arms was noticeably tense when she was first placed in his hold, but as he held her and spoke to her softly, she seemed to relax a bit more in his arms.

"Yeah, that's good, you and me, we'll get along," he cooed at her, watching her eyes closing happily as he scratched behind her ears. "Hey, Hunter, c'mere, you hold her, too."

Hunter nodded slightly, moving over and taking Noelle from Sebastian. "This isn't really necessary," he said. "She's going to be your cat. As long as you like her and she likes you, that's all that matters."

"No, it matters if she likes you," he said. "I can't keep somebody around that my cat doesn't like."

"Oh, shut up, you," he said, rolling his eyes and turning his attention back to the cat in his arms, who appeared to slowly be accepting being held by him as well.

"But seriously," Sebastian said, looking down and watching as Hunter pet her, "It does matter to me. You know, Tesla likes me and all. I don't know. Your opinion matters to me."

Hunter smiled softly at him, nodding. "Okay, good. I get it," he said. He held her for a bit longer before she started to wiggle, moving to climb onto his shoulders. He turned, making it so that she was facing Sebastian.

"Hi angel," he said, reaching out and pulling her from Hunter's shoulder before holding her up to his face to give her an eskimo kiss (if you were to badger Hunter, he might eventually admit that it was one of the cutest things he had ever seen). "Hey, how old does that paper say she is?"

"Um…" he hummed as he went over to look at the label on her cage. "Three."

"And how old is Tesla?" he asked.

"Not exactly sure, but somewhere around four or five," he said, shrugging.

"Okay," he said, nodding. "Sounds pretty reasonable. I mean, I get that they're different cats, different personalities and all that, but yeah."

"I'm sure you'll be fine," he said with a shrug. "Regardless of her age."

"Yeah, I figure," he said. "But still. Good to have a frame of reference."

Hunter nodded. Neither of them said anything for a moment, Sebastian just cuddling the cat in his arms. "So, are you saying yes to the cat?"

"Say yes to the cat?" he echoed, laughing softly. "Should I start crying and all that shit?"

"Of course," he said, chuckling. He rolled his eyes, gesturing to the door. "C'mon, you, let's go get the adoption going."

And so Sebastian got a cat named Noelle who was the perfect complement to Sebastian's loud, outgoing nature.


	7. Chapter 7

For a while after that, they spent more time at Sebastian's apartment than Hunter's. It was a definite change of scenery, but it was a matter of convenience at this point, what with Noelle needing supervision while she acclimated to her new home, and he figured that it wasn't a terrible place to be, either.

After all, things were just about the same at Sebastian's apartment as they were at his own, the two of them sitting around watching TV and eating, though there was more playing with the cat there than they did at Hunter's (which was not to say that they didn't play with Tesla – of course they did, he wouldn't have it any other way). Sure, Sebastian's apartment didn't really have much to it, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It had Sebastian and Noelle and a comfortable couch, and that seemed like it was enough.

The biggest difference, really, was the traveling time. Because of the fact that Sebastian's apartment was closer to Hunter's work combined with their ability to lose track of time, he found himself somewhat regularly just opting to spend the night in Sebastian's apartment. Some nights he slept on the couch, while others Sebastian was able to convince him to sleep in his bed with him ("spooning optional, but preferred"). Noelle would settle in between them and even though Hunter was pretty sure that it should have been at least a little bit awkward, it wasn't at all.

Spending the night at Sebastian's apartment also meant that he would inevitably sleep in the other man's clothes. It took a lot of mental strength for Hunter to not read into the fact that he really liked that.

It was just nice. There were perfect evenings where they'd completely forgone the living room and had gone straight to settle into the bedroom for the night, laying side by side with the TV on and Sebastian playfully asking Hunter if he was ready to cuddle yet.

(And then of course there were the nights that they _didn't_ spend in either of their apartments, instead electing to go on what anyone else might look at as dates. They would go out to dinner together, or go see a movie together, or other things along those lines. Neither of them considered it weird, but the fact of the matter was that he was pretty sure some of their waitresses made the assumption that they were together as opposed to just being friends dining together.)

The problem with all that, of course, was that it all sounded very romantic and domestic, and even though it _wasn't_ and both of them knew that very well, trying to explain it and having it make sense and be as clear cut as it was was difficult. Like when he had gotten a phone call from one of his army buddies, asking him what was new in his life. It wasn't like he felt the need to dance around the situation, he figured that it was what it was, but he also understood how, from an outsider's point of view, it sounded a little bit gay. And if it struck his friend as odd at all, he opted not to comment on it, instead going on to inform Hunter that he and a few of their other friends would be in the area. They thought it might be nice to all meet up, and if Hunter wanted to, he could bring along Sebastian for the guys to meet.

He brought it up to Sebastian, expecting to a certain extent that he would just laugh off the invitation; it was one of those universal things that hanging out with your friend's friends was awkward and unfavorable. But of course, as Sebastian always did, he did exactly what he wasn't expecting to.

"So, you and a bunch of other guys, real man's man kind of guys, good ole boys, on a fishing trip?" Sebastian asked him, looking like he had just won the lottery. "That's amazing. I kind of thought that that wasn't a thing that happened in real life."

Hunter rolled his eyes at him, laughing softly. "Yes, it happens," he said.

"That's so, like, I don't even know. It sounds like it's straight out of some movie," he said. "Aggressively country."

"You don't have to come along if you don't want to."

"Woah now, did I ever say I didn't want to?" he asked, letting out a laugh and shaking his head. He picked up Noelle, who had come by and was sniffing at his toes. "What do you think, Noelle, should I go?"

And then Sebastian did just about the dorkiest thing that he ever did (and that he also did with somewhat surprising frequency): he held the cat up, speaking in a high-pitched voice as if it were her speaking. "Of course, Dad. You have to go! And bring me a fish."

"Just what I was thinking," he said, back in his normal voice. He chuckled softly, scratching her chin. "Wouldn't miss a chance to see you in your natural, hetero habitat for the world."

"Don't call it that," he said, shaking his head.

"I just have to call it like I see it, Clarington," he said and grinned at him.

Hunter shook his head at him. "Just don't do anything stupid or embarrassing, please," he said.

"What, are you worried about me making you look like a fool to your friends?" he asked, laughing softly.

"Honestly, yeah," he said, shrugging. "They were my best friends for a while, you're my best friend now, so it'd be kind of nice to know that you all would get along and everyone would approve of each other."

"Just remember that I'm better than them and it'll all be okay," Sebastian said.

* * *

The next week rolled around and this so did the arrival of Hunter's friends. The plan for everything was fairly simple – they would all meet up and have an early lunch, and then they would head out to a pond that one of the guys' father owned the land around.

Showing up at the restaurant was an interesting thing. For the most part, Hunter knew everyone at the table. It was a few of his friends from his time in Hawaii, as well as a guy he recognized but had barely known, but then there was also the fact that a couple of them had brought along their girlfriends. Though Hunter had known that none of them were really going to be bringing along other friends of theirs, he had kind of assumed that the goal here was more of a "bro weekend" type of thing.

Instead, what he ended up being faced with was a few of his old best friends and their girlfriends, and him with his entirely platonic but not necessarily platonic-seeming best friend.

Throughout the entire day, nobody said anything about it. Most likely, the only person who really seemed to notice or care that it seemed to mostly be a "couples and then Hunter and Sebastian" sort of thing was Hunter himself, but to him it felt like it was glaringly obvious.

While his friends discussed with their partners what they should eat, he and Sebastian swapped considerations and advice.

At the end of the meal, when the waitress came by to ask how the bill should be split, Sebastian jumped in and insisted on paying for both him and Hunter's meals, which was a typical thing for them to do when they ate together, trading off turns paying, but when the same thing was happening with his friends beside him, it felt different.

Sebastian had never gone fishing before in his life, so he needed help getting everything figured out. He was a city boy through and through and as a result was a bit hesitant when it came to putting the worm on his hook ("it's just weird and gross, is all"), so Hunter did it for him, and continued to all day whenever he needed it. He had no idea how to cast the line, and even when Hunter tried to explain it to him as best he could several times, it just wasn't getting through, so he tried to show him by demonstrating, which of course had not worked for him, either. If it wasn't for the fact that Sebastian looked just as frustrated with it as he felt, he might have assumed that he was just pretending to be this clueless. And so, of course, Hunter had no choice to take his arms in his hands and physically show him how to do it.

No one laughed or made jokes; in fact, no one paid much attention. Everyone was just hanging out, drinking beer and having a good time together. It was that simple. And it wasn't like he was expecting his friends to be overly homophobic and start freaking out that he had so much as touched another guy's skin (hell, he had had some gay friends in the army, and even the straight guys could get pretty homoerotic at times), but still. He was hanging out with his old friends and Sebastian as well and everything was normal. He could do things like this, he could do a little bit of experimenting into the quiet thoughts he had in the back of his mind sometimes that nagged _what if you_ are _bi or gay?_ and _maybe you and Sebastian are meant to be together_ (thoughts that he wasn't sure when and where they had come from, but by now they crossed his mind often enough when he was hanging out with Sebastian that he couldn't just ignore it anymore) _,_ and the world wouldn't end as a result of it.

* * *

The next time they saw each other, they drank. And they drank a lot. Not the casual, 'we're hanging out and it would be better with some beer' kind of drinking, but the 'Sebastian has had a hellish week and would very much like to get it behind him with much tequila or whisky' kind.

The thing was this: it wasn't like Hunter had never thought about it. He knew that Sebastian was gay, and he knew that he had feelings for him, at least for some period of time (they hadn't talked about it since the first time it came up, and for all Hunter knew maybe it had gone away with time). And sure, he had always assumed that he was straight, but he also knew that that didn't necessarily mean anything; it just meant that he had never considered anything else. He had come from a very conservative background; who could blame him for assuming that being straight was his only option?

But now that he had started thinking about it, he couldn't stop. Bringing Sebastian along on the fishing trip had brought the idea to the front of his mind, and now he couldn't get it to go away. And even if he could, he wasn't sure that he would want to. The relationship that he and Sebastian had was, undeniably, very close. It was domestic. He had known that for a while now. They slept in the same bed regularly, they would go out on what anyone else would call dates, which was something that his sister had been eager to point out over the phone at one point, then helpfully add a moment later that _Dad would totally not approve at all_. Hunter was, in effect, dating a guy, just without that label on it, or much of anything physical (he was, in fact, still not to the point of allowing Sebastian to spoon him like he liked to tease him about).

It wasn't like he was constantly thinking about it, either. It was just something that popped into his mind now and then, and it was also something that he didn't particularly mind, but he also didn't really want to think about _too_ much.

But here he was, having long since jumped over the fence into drunken territory, drunker than he hafd been in a long time, and Sebastian was telling him a story and he could barely pay attention because his eyes were so drawn to Sebastian's lips. He had no idea why he hadn't noticed them before, not in any way that was more significant than "hey, he's a human being with lips and I've seen him apply Chapstick a couple of times." They were soft, he could tell, just by looking at them. And when he took a sip of his beer, after he pulled the can away from his lips, there was still a little shine on them because of his skin being a little bit wet.

And his freckles. Of course he knew that Sebastian had freckles, they were fairly plain on his face, and on his arms, and probably elsewhere. Probably everywhere.

"Are you listening?" he asked, cutting into Hunter's train of thought. His face is suddenly one of concern, and damn, his eyes are so very green.

"Oh," he said, realizing a bit belatedly that no, in fact, he had not been paying attention. "Yeah, of course." Being that Sebastian wasn't much better off than he was, he accepted it and continued his story (it was one that, if Hunter had been sober, he would have hated to miss out on; it was from his college days, involving an elevator, a noise maker, and a store mannequin).

Suddenly Hunter felt the overwhelming desire to find _all_ of Sebastian's freckles. And he knew that he shouldn't. He knew that he was drunk and doing things like undressing someone while drunk, especially when said someone was your best friend and was also drunk, was a bad idea. But in that moment – of course _because_ of how drunk he was, he couldn't find it in himself to even care what a bad idea it was.

He leaned in, his hand reaching for Sebastian's face, and kissed him, effectively cutting off his sentence and the rest of his story.

For a moment, Sebastian tried to resist it, the other man in decently better shape than Hunter was, at least drunk-wise. "Wait—" he started, interrupted once more by Hunter's insistent lips against his own. "Hunter, don't…"

But soon his hand that had been pressed against Hunter's chest in an attempt to shove him back and stop him from continuing to kiss him was instead gripping Hunter's shoulder, pulling at him and holding him in close.

From that point on, things started to move fast, almost too fast for him to properly process everything that was going on. Sebastian's lips were even softer than they had looked, but at the same time firm against Hunter's, quickly going from surprised and hesitant to completely sure, taking control of the kiss. His hand ended up in Sebastian's hair, fingers tangling in his soft locks and occasionally tugging in a way that made Sebastian's lips stutter for a moment so that he could moan into Hunter's mouth.

He had never really done all too much kissing. He hadn't had much experience in anything sexual, if he was being honest, which wasn't to say that he was an awkward virgin or anything, but he also wasn't sure whether he was just impressed because he didn't know better or whether Sebastian really _was_ that good of a kisser (or because he was drunk, which was a possibility that didn't occur to him in that moment). And of course, there was the fact that any other time he had done anything like this, it had been with a girl. And Sebastian was so very much not a girl. He was hard lines and long limbs, none of the soft curves that he'd been with before. And he absolutely did not mind.

Eventually Sebastian pulled back, making Hunter let out a disappointed noise that was a bit more pathetic than he would have liked to admit. He chuckled softly, leaning in and pecking Hunter's lips again before moving his hand to the hem of his shirt, looking at him pointedly.

It took Hunter a moment to catch on as to what Sebastian was asking, but when he did he nodded quickly, then moved his arms up to allow him to pull the shirt off. "You too," he said.

"Of course," Sebastian said with a small nod, removing Hunter's shirt and quickly shedding his own as well.

Hunter had seen Sebastian without a shirt on before, of course he had. He had seen him change, seen him complaining about how hot it was and immediately start stripping, things like that. But now, within the context of getting _involved_ with Sebastian, it was like something else entirely. He had to touch him. And soon his hands sliding over Sebastian's skin, fingertips tracing constellations in his freckles, turned to hands pressing Sebastian to lay back against the arm of the couch they were sitting on. Sebastian went willingly, settling back and looking down at Hunter as he leaned down and started peppering kisses over his skin.

Before he could get too carried away with it, though, Sebastian pushed him back again. "We should…" he started, and looking back, that is the moment that it should have stopped. His next words should have been something along the lines of, 'We should stop' and that could have been the end of it. Instead, what he said was, "We should go to the bedroom."

Just like Sebastian should have stopped them from going on, what Hunter should have done then was pull back from him, remember exactly who this was and what they were doing, and he absolutely should have refrained from going to the bedroom with Sebastian. But of course none of that happened, and so he found himself getting to his feet and reaching for Sebastian's hands. "Of course," he said, pulling him to his feet and kissing him again quickly before they went to the bedroom.

And things most certainly did not end there.

They stopped in the middle of Hunter's bedroom again to kiss, crashing down onto the bed together. In the back of his mind, he wondered a little bit if he had ever felt like he did then before, if he had ever felt this much pure, uncontrolled passion before.

They made quick work of ridding each other of their pants, allowing them to make out flat on the bed together with plenty of skin brushing together, until Sebastian's hands moved to the waist of Hunter's briefs. He pulled away from the kiss, glancing between Hunter's face and his crotch as he pulled off the underwear almost reverently. Hunter laid back and allowed him to just look at him, his eyes dark and stuck on his cock, before he brought his hands up to Sebastian's boxers. "Fair is fair," he said and Sebastian nodded slightly, shifting to allow Hunter to remove them. There was a moment once both of them were entirely naked that neither of them said anything and they both just kind of stared at each other, but they also didn't really feel like they needed words. There was the unspoken understanding that they both appreciated the look of the other, and they both knew exactly what they were getting into.

And just like that they were kissing again. Hunter was barely aware of what exactly his hands were doing, just touching as much of Sebastian's skin as he could reach while he was still attached to him by the lips.

There was just one moment of hesitation, when he felt Sebastian's cock, a hard line brushing against his hip. It wasn't like he hadn't noticed it there before (of course he had) but it was just… different, feeling it there against him. He wasn't sure how exactly he would describe the feeling; scared was too strong of a word and besides, this was _Sebastian_ and nothing had ever felt scary with Sebastian before now and nothing was going to change that. Maybe intimidated was the right word. He'd never had anything inside of him, especially not anything of that size, but there was also no questioning how much he wanted that in that moment.

It was almost as if Sebastian had read his mind, because it was right about then that he pulled back from the kiss and asked him, his voice just the right side of breathless, "Do you have condoms anywhere?"

Hunter had to pause for a second to consider the question, then shook his head. "I don't think so," he said, hoping desperately that those words would not mean this was over.

"Of course you don't," he said with a laugh, shaking his head. "Mr. Boring." He stood up, ignoring the way Hunter was reaching out to pull him back close.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

Sebastian glanced back at him as he made his way clumsily back to where his pants were on the ground. "You want to fuck, don't you?" he asked, and a moment later after fishing around in his pockets for his wallet he procured a condom and held it up in lieu of an explanation.

"Yes, god yes," he said, nodding quickly and kissing Sebastian again when he returned to the bed. He almost felt like he was starting to get addicted to the feeling of Sebastian's lips on his.

But all too soon, Sebastian was pulling back again, looking down at him with a frown. "Shit."

"What?" he asked, furrowing his brow.

"Lube," he said. "We need lube." He paused for a moment, seeming to be trying to find possibly solutions. "Spit doesn't work. Nobody wants rashes. I can't put on clothes right now."

Eventually, Hunter had to cut him off, shaking his head. "I have lube."

At any other time, the dumbfounded look Sebastian was giving him then would have been humorous. "You don't have condoms, but you have lube," he said, shaking his head slightly in disbelief. "I… Never mind. Don't tell me, imagining reasons is better."

Hunter laughed softly and nodded. "I'll be right back," he said and reluctantly moved out from underneath Sebastian. He got to his feet and stumbled to the bathroom to get the small bottle from his cabinet before returning.

"Can I top?" Sebastian asked him as he returned to the bed, greeting him with a kiss.

"Absolutely," he said, offering up the lube to him and laying back.

Sebastian hummed in appreciation, looking down at him with a smile before leaning down to kiss him again. "So gorgeous," he mumbled before opening the bottle and coating his fingers.

From there on, things started to get a little bit fuzzy for Hunter, a combination of pleasure and pain and alcohol turning everything into a bit of a mess in his brain.

Sebastian's fingers were long inside of him and made up for how the way he had to stretch around him was a bit painful. Even when it did hurt, he couldn't find it in him to care too much, not with the way Sebastian was giving him gentle kisses and soft compliments. He was slow and gentle on him, more mindful of Hunter's inexperience than he could have expected given their levels of intoxication. His deep green eyes were locked on his face, clearly taking note of any signs of discomfort or anything, and he adjusted as necessary when there were any such signals.

Somewhere during the process of Sebastian opening him up, he had lost the ability to speak aside from in moans and unintelligent syllables, so when Sebastian asked him if he was ready for him, all he could do was nod enthusiastically. The action earned him another kiss before Sebastian pulled back to get himself ready. Hunter watched him open the packet and roll the condom onto himself, feeling almost absent from the moment until Sebastian was moving over him again, pulling Hunter's thighs up and apart to get himself lined up.

"If you need me to stop, just say something," he said and waited for Hunter to nod before moving forward, slowly taking his cock and pressing the head inside of the other man.

It hurt, of course it did. Hunter had never had anything inside of him like that, and Sebastian's fingers hadn't been enough to really approximate this sensation. He had never felt this full and stretched out before, feeling different than anything he had ever experienced before, but as he adapted once Sebastian was deep inside of him, he decided that it was a good kind of different.

When Sebastian started moving, it was another entirely new sensation that he quickly grew to love. Each thrust made him let out a low moan, Sebastian making a similar noise in response. It wasn't long before they were both moving desperately together, kissing each other with absolutely no art to it, just wanting that extra point of contact between them.

Hunter wasn't sure who came first. All he was entirely sure of was the fact that it was over way too soon, and he had never orgasmed that hard in his life.

After they had both caught their breath and Sebastian slipped out of him and disposed of the condom, they laid down together. It was just like the last several times that they had been together in bed, simple and comfortable, except this time Sebastian finally got the spooning that he had been asking for all that time.

They laid there for a bit, Hunter's arms wrapped tight around Sebastian, and eventually Tesla joined them on the bed. It wasn't long before they started to fall asleep, yawning and growing heavy against each other. One of Hunter's last waking thoughts was of how perfect everything seemed.


	8. Chapter 8

In the morning, everything changed.

Hunter woke up to Sebastian wiggling out of his arms, and he opened his eyes to watch him sitting up, running his fingers through his hair.

"Shit," Sebastian mumbled under his breath, glancing back down at Hunter.

"What's wrong?" he asked him with a small frown, yawning as he woke up more fully.

"What's wrong?" he echoed, raising an eyebrow. "Are you seriously… I… You know what we did last night, don't you, Hunter?"

"Yeah, I do," he said with a frown. "I don't—"

Sebastian didn't appear to be particularly interested in listening to whatever he was trying to say, instead barreling on himself. "We had sex last night," he said. "I… Fuck. I told myself I wouldn't let anything like this happen, I wouldn't be that guy. I've never been the predatory gay guy, I only hit on gay guys, never straight guys, fucking hell, especially not _you_."

"Bas, stop, it's not like—"

"Actually, Hunter, yeah, that is absolutely what it was like," he said, shaking his head.

"I wanted it just as much as you did," he protested.

"Because you were drunk and you're nice," he said. "You knew that this was something I would have wanted, I got some alcohol in you, and went on my merry way. I practically date raped you."

"That is taking it way too far," he said, his frown deepening as the conversation went on. "You were there. We both wanted it."

Sebastian didn't seem to be having it, though, still shaking his head and running his fingers through his hair, distress clear in his features. "You were drunk, it shouldn't have happened."

"You were drunk, too. I am just as at fault for this as you are," he said.

"You're _straight_ ," he said. "This is clearly all my fault. And I should have known better than to let this happen."

"Are you going to completely ignore the fact that we both enjoyed it?" he asked. "And how I actually made the first move?"

Sebastian just shook his head. "I can't…" he started and then trailed off, getting to his feet. He started grabbing his clothes from off the floor, pulling them on and resolutely ignoring Hunter's protests and requests for him to just _come back to bed and talk about this, come on, Sebastian, please_. Before he headed for the door, he added, "I just need to clear my mind. Fuck, I'm sorry, look, I'll call you later or something, I don't know."

* * *

Hunter waited for a while, telling himself that Sebastian just needed a bit of time to cool off and realize that he had done nothing wrong. He wouldn't be able to convince him of that with words anyways, and right now he was tired enough that he was willing to let it be for now.

When a few hours passed and he still hadn't heard back from him, he started to get a bit more concerned. What if Sebastian really did feel like he'd done something that wrong last night? After all, considering it from his friend's point of view, the whole thing had probably seemed far too out of the blue for it to be anything more than a drunken mistake. He should have tried harder to make Sebastian listen, to make him understand that it wasn't that and that he absolutely, in no uncertain terms, _had_ in fact wanted this (granted, of course, not necessarily under these circumstances).

He gave it a bit longer before he started letting himself panic.

To Sebastian: _Hey, just wanted to check up on you since you seemed pretty freaked out this morning._

To Sebastian: _I'd really like to talk to you some more about it._

To Sebastian: _Preferably in person, because I feel like this conversation will be a bit much to have over text message._

To Sebastian: _In the meantime, though, please don't beat yourself up over what happened. Please understand that I don't regret it at all and I really don't want you to regret it, either._

Sebastian didn't reply to any of his messages, and when he tried to call him it rang out until eventually it asked him to leave a voicemail. And as much as some part of Hunter wanted to freak out, not wanting to go into another Sebastian-less period of time, he told himself that it would be for the best if he let it sit for a bit. As much as he didn't want to let Sebastian hurt or be upset for any longer, he also knew enough about him to know that he was a logical person. Eventually he would work through this in his mind and he would come back around, it was just a matter of time.

Normally, of course, Hunter was a very patient person (while Sebastian was the more antsy, impatient one), but in that moment he had never felt more on edge while waiting. He just wanted everything to be good with Sebastian again, neither of them feeling guilty or confused, especially since, as far as he could see, there was no real reason for either of them to be feeling bad. Just some miscommunication, he guessed.

But even though he didn't want to let it go, he knew that it would be for the best. Not forever, of course. If Sebastian took too long, he would have to push the issue again, if for no other reason than to be sure that they didn't lose each other as they had come so close to doing before.

* * *

Sebastian sent Hunter flowers.

He arrived at work to find a colorful arrangement at his desk, the secretary giddily asking him who they were from and why. He had to shoo her away with a very vague and only partially true explanation once he checked the card and saw who they were from, because he was fairly sure that 'my best friend sent these to me because he feels bad because he thinks he took advantage of me even though I totally wanted to have sex with him' would not have been a good answer, no matter how true it was.

The card didn't say much, just a simple 'sorry' and Sebastian's name, likely because he had run into a similar situation, not wanting to tell the florist the whole story as to why these flowers were being sent. Granted, even Hunter who was there for all of it wasn't entirely sure, either; it was a nice gesture, he supposed, and the flowers were gorgeous, but he still felt that there was no apology necessary and what he would have much preferred instead was a conversation with Sebastian.

To Sebastian: _Thank you for the flowers. They're beautiful. You really didn't have to, though._

But Sebastian clearly was not ready to have a conversation with him, and so he resigned himself to having to wait for a bit in order for him to get there. Which, while frustrating, he did understand.

However, sitting there at his desk with the flowers staring at him did not help him any in terms of productivity. He was typically the 'out of sight, out of mind' kind of person, so he might have been able to forget about what was going on with Sebastian if it wasn't for the vase sitting there, staring at him.

Part of him knew that it was a good thing, though. What had happened with them was big and sudden and maybe taking a step back for now was the right thing to do, even if it wasn't fun. The only thing that he wished, of course, was to be able to convince Sebastian that he shouldn't feel bad or blame himself for it.

The end of the work day arrived and he still hadn't heard back from Sebastian, and he tried not to think too much into that fact. He was a busy person, too, sometimes, so it probably wasn't anything to be concerned about.

(That mindset, however, did not help him stop the slight disappointment he felt when he got back to his apartment and found it empty of anyone other than his cat. He knew that it would be ridiculous to have expected or even hoped that Sebastian would just be there, but still, here he was.)

The next day, though, his phone finally went off, and he had never been happier to hear his phone vibrate before, barring maybe the last time that Sebastian had stopped talking to him to deal with his emotions.

From Sebastian: _you're welcome for the flowers. I'm glad you like them. but please, hunt, just… take some time and think about this. what we did the other night has the potential to really change things, and I just want to be sure that you've thought about it before we talk about it any more. the last thing I want is for you to change your mind on how you feel in a couple weeks or something_

And just like that, he was able to really think about this and to put the sex into perspective. Sebastian's words did a few things for him: the fact that they were so clearly serious and firm made it different from most other conversations with him, made it clear that he wanted to be understood; not that Sebastian was never a serious person or anything, but still, this text held a weight with it that he could never remember any other conversation with him having. But the way he put it… It seemed to Hunter that given the couple of days that had passed, he was moving on some from blaming himself and letting guilt cloud his mind, onto something more like hope that he didn't dare put any details into yet.

Sebastian was right, of course. He needed to think about this more. Sure, there was an attraction there, obviously; one that he hadn't explored before but at the same time he was fairly certain had been there right from the start but he had successfully ignored.

And sure, what had made him finally acknowledge that attraction had been everyone else in his life – right down to his sister who had never even _met_ Sebastian – noticing the fact that his behavior with Sebastian was more like that of a couple than of best friends. But that didn't necessarily mean anything. Plenty of people had good, very close relationships with their best friends, but that didn't mean that they would make a good couple.

But still, even knowing that he and Sebastian weren't necessarily picture perfect couple material just based on their relationship as it was, there was still the fact that he felt like it _could_ be. Clearly Sebastian had felt it, too, hadn't he? The only reason that he hadn't done anything about it was because he thought Hunter was straight, right?

That and the fact that they were good friends and, of course, there was that age old concern about relationships ruining good friendships. But the thing was, had they already crossed that line by now? Part of him felt like they had. They had had sex, and now the line between friendship and romance was smudged enough that there wasn't really any going back. Not for him, anyway.

The most frustrating thing in all of this was the fact that, in most situations, who would he have gone to to talk about this? Sebastian. Sure, of course he had some other people he could talk to, but no one he was as comfortable with as Sebastian. And that was another sign as well, wasn't it?

He had always just _assumed_ he was straight. After all, the possibility of being anything but straight had never seemed like much of an option. In fact, to a certain degree, the idea of not being heterosexual was a little bit terrifying; his father, beyond a shadow of a doubt, would not approve one bit. And he really didn't want to know what would happen as a result of that disapproval.

But roots before branches, he figured. Before he could even think about coming out to his father, he would first have to figure out what he would tell him when that time came. He clearly wasn't straight; not a hundred percent, anyways. He had enjoyed kissing Sebastian (had enjoyed everything else they had done as well, of course, but that was beside the point) way too much to still consider himself straight. But he also knew that the experiences he had had in the past with women had been enjoyable. And he had never really been attracted to other guys before Sebastian, but maybe that was just a matter of him not considering it? It had taken him this long to notice how attractive Sebastian was, after all.

 _Bisexual is the word you're looking for,_ his mind supplied helpfully, and he knew that was probably right, but for some reason he was still not ready to use that term, to a certain degree.

Thinking about it was simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating, and he knew that it would take a bit of time to figure out what exactly the deal there was. At the end of the day, he guessed, Sebastian was right. This was something that needed more thought behind it, in order to be fair to Sebastian, who he was fairly certain would be up for it and waiting whenever Hunter was ready.


	9. Chapter 9

The next time they saw each other, they didn't talk about it. None of it; not the sex, not anything before or after it, not Hunter's confused feelings for him.

Instead, Sebastian texted him and asked if he could come over, saying that he thought it was about time for Noelle to get a bit more socialization, as in, bringing Noelle to meet Tesla. And, after doing a bit of Googling on the best ways to introduce cats to each other – and subsequently making the decision to pretty much wing it, it wasn't like Hunter hadn't had cats before – he texted him back saying that he was on board.

Hunter ended up having to pick Sebastian and Noelle up in his car, Sebastian citing the fact that his only other options were to walk or to bring Noelle on the metro (taxis notwithstanding, seeing as plenty of drivers wouldn't want to have a cat in their car, even with the cat being in a carrier).

On the drive between Sebastian and Hunter's apartments, it was pretty clear to them how much progress Noelle had made in terms of her confidence. Instead of being curled up in Sebastian's lap, practically cowering in fear of all of the new things around her, she was on her feet, looking around. Her paws frequently ended up on the window, wide eyes staring at the world passing by (though this also often ended up with her not expecting stopping and consequently tumbling down into Sebastian's lap).

What had not changed was how adorable Sebastian was with the little cat. He kept cooing to her happily, laughing and doing his best to steady her when she moved around.

At one point, Noelle left her spot on Sebastian's lap, getting up and making slow steps onto the center console towards Hunter. "Yeah, go visit him," he said with a soft chuckle. "I'm sure he's missed you."

"Oh, I most certainly have," he said with a laugh, rolling his eyes fondly. "Being around Tesla makes me appreciate you all the much more."

"You talk about your cat as if you hate him," Sebastian said not for the first time, shaking his head.

"He's a little shit."

"Yeah, but you love him," he said, looking out ahead of them with a grin.

"Maybe," he said. "But don't tell him I said that."

Sebastian chuckled softly, shaking his head. "I'm gonna tell him," he said. "Unfortunately, he doesn't speak English."

"Don't meow it to him," he said.

"Damn, my best plans, ruined," he replied with a laugh, shaking his head.

Hunter chuckled, shaking his head. "How did I know? When did you become such a fucking dork?"

"When did you start cursing? I'm rubbing off on you." He looked back at Hunter, his gaze darting down, expecting to see Noelle making herself at home on his lap. "Where did…?"

Hunter laughed as he trailed off, gesturing with his head. While they had been talking, Noelle had apparently climbed up his front, settling now on his shoulders behind his neck, held up between him and the seat of the car.

"Oh my god, that is so fucking cute," Sebastian said with a grin, pulling out his phone. He held it up and took a picture of Hunter and Noelle, looking at his screen with a smile before putting the phone away.

* * *

A bit surprisingly, Noelle and Tesla got used to each other almost immediately. When they were first introduced to each other, there was some hesitation, of course. Well. There was hesitation on Noelle's end. Tesla, however, was very excited by the prospect of having a new friend to play with and so pretty much the first thing he did upon meeting her was pounce on her. That didn't help things much, but when she realized that he wasn't going to hurt her and was just trying to play, she got less defensive and instead started playing with him back.

"Told you they were going to be best friends," Sebastian said with a satisfied hum as he and Hunter sat on the couch side by side, watching the cats on the floor in front of them.

"I never disagreed with you," he said, chuckling softly.

"Still," he said with a grin. "I told you, and look at them now. Bestest buddies."

"By default, though," he said. "I'm not even sure when the last time Tesla ever saw another cat was."

"You keeping your cat a hermit is not my problem," Sebastian said, chuckling softly and shaking his head. "I mean, they could've hated each other. And we never would have been able to get them together again."

"I'm sure they would've gotten over it eventually," he said. "We would've convinced them to be friends one way or another."

"Hopefully," he said with a smile, kicking his feet up on the coffee table and falling silent as they watched the cats together.

Eventually Tesla got tired and hopped up onto the couch to retire by Sebastian's side. Noelle looked at him with a bit of confusion before she followed suit, getting onto the couch and curling up beside him. At that point, when the cats stopped being entertainment enough, they sat in silence for a little before Sebastian carefully got to his feet so as not to disturb them. He went and got Hunter's laptop, setting it up and starting something playing before sitting back down on the couch.

They sat like that for a while, just watching TV together with the cats sitting between them, both of them absolutely not thinking at all about what had happened between them the last time they were in this spot.

Which is to say, of course, it was quietly eating at the back of Hunter's mind and he was dying to say something about it but he couldn't find the right words. And even if he could have found the right words, at the same time, he felt fairly certain that he wouldn't want to bring it up. He didn't even know if Sebastian was thinking about it too. And if he wasn't, what if he got too intense about it and it was awkward? What if Sebastian was waiting for him to bring it up when he had answers, and Hunter definitely did not have answers to give him yet. So he tried to get himself to forget about it. Things were simple right now. This was just him and Sebastian, hanging out, as usual.

Which is what he kept telling himself when the afternoon began to turn into the evening and Sebastian got up again. "I think that it's about time I made us some dinner," he said.

"You don't have to do that," Hunter replied, looking up at him.

"I want to," he said with a shrug.

"You might have some trouble making anything, given the lack of ingredients in there," he replied, chuckling softly.

"Don't doubt me," Sebastian said, pointing a finger at him before turning and heading into the kitchen. "I'll be back when I'm done."

Hunter laughed and rolled his eyes, reaching his hand down and petting the cats as he waited for Sebastian to come back. He closed his eyes and laid his head back for a moment, letting himself relax more than he had in the time since he and Sebastian had hooked up. Sure, there was still the issue of what they were going to be in the future and everything, but actually being around Sebastian had reminded him that things didn't necessarily have to be awkward in the aftermath of their… hookup. He guessed that was the right word, even though it felt like it was something dirtier and more detached than what he had actually felt in the moment.

He shook his head slightly to clear his thoughts, making himself stop thinking about it. No good came from overthinking things, especially not when he had just calmed himself down again over this whole thing.

Hunter had practically fallen asleep by the time Sebastian returned to the living room, a fact that he was not aware of until he was jolted awake again by the feeling of someone sitting down beside him.

"You okay there, tiger?" Sebastian said with a laugh, the look he was giving him equal parts amused and fond.

"Yeah, sorry, just kinda dozed off," he said.

"I noticed," he said with a grin, holding out a bowl to him. "You were right, I couldn't get fancy. But you can't complain, because I was _slaving over the stove_ while you were in here _sleeping_."

"Oh my god, shut up, you are not a housewife," he said and shook his head, laughing softly.

"Don't tell me what I can and can't be."

"If you were a housewife, you'd probably want us to be sitting at a table to eat this," he said. He looked down at the bowl then, seeing that what Sebastian had made was just penne pasta in tomato sauce, but even without being able to be "fancy" he had put some work into presentation, putting an aesthetically pleasing layer of parmesan cheese on top.

"We've got a table right here," Sebastian said with a grin, gesturing to the coffee table before putting his feet up.

"I don't think that that should count, but I'll let it slide," he said.

"Thank you," he said, humming as he leaned back, starting to eat.

Apparently the smell of the sauce had woken Tesla up, because he was sitting up now, looking between Hunter and Sebastian with big eyes. After sizing them both up, he seemed to decide that Sebastian was more likely to give him some (which was probably true; between the two of them, Sebastian was the way bigger softy when it came to the cats' begging), and went over to him, meowing and nudging his arm.

"What's up, pal?" Sebastian asked him, looking at him with a grin.

The only answer Tesla gave him was a headbutt and another meow.

"Okay," he said. "It sounds like you want something."

Another meow.

"But I don't know what you want," he said. "You have to tell me. In words. Tell me what you want, Tesla."

The cat just looked up at him, the look on his face seeming just about as helpless as a cat could get.

"Speaking on behalf of Tesla here, you're the worst," Hunter commented.

Sebastian just laughed and picked up his fork, holding out a piece of pasta to Tesla, who sniffed at it for a moment before pulling it away from him. "No, _now_ I'm being the worst," he said. After doing the same thing again, he finally held it steady, letting the cat sniff and lick the pasta a couple of times before ultimately leaving it and settling back down on the couch cushion. "Ungrateful."

"That's cats for you," he said with a soft laugh.

"Noelle wouldn't do that," he said with a grin before bringing his fork to his mouth, taking the bite off of it.

Hunter watched him, raising his eyebrows. "Please tell me I did not just witness you eat something that the cat was just licking."

"I don't see what the big deal is," he said with a soft laugh, rolling his eyes.

"It's disgusting, is what the point is," he said.

"I'm not just going to throw it away," he said, shaking his head.

"Do you know how dirty cats' mouths are? The sheer amount of germs?"

Sebastian laughed, shrugging. "If I die, sharing pasta with a cat wouldn't be the worst way to go."

"Such an ass," he said, shaking his head.

"You keep coming back, though," he said with a grin, humming.

"You don't give me any choice," he said.

"Actually, historically, I have," he pointed out, and an awkward silence followed for a moment before he added, "But yeah, I get it. I'm just so charming and handsome, I can't blame you for wanting to hang around all the time."

It struck Hunter then just how very _easy_ this was. If there were moments that were a little bit awkward, they would quickly turn it around, always had. They could say things like that and make fun of each other and tease and poke fun at their past and it didn't have to be the end of the world.

And that was the long and short of it, he guessed. This thing they had, whatever it was, it was good. It was good and easy and made both of them happy, and he figured there wasn't a whole lot more he could ask.

They sat like that for a while, chatting and hanging out and just generally enjoying each other's company, occasionally having the thought to put something up on the TV but for the most part not bothering with it.

But the evening wore on and then came the reminder that they were not quite back to the point where they could spend the night together again. And that wasn't super surprising, but it was also a little bit disappointing. There was an awkward moment between them as Sebastian came to the conclusion that he should probably head home, but he also needed Hunter to bring him home since he had Noelle with him.

"I mean, I could just leave her here overnight if you're not feeling up to driving across town…" he said, frowning at the wall. "So I could just take the metro, you know."

"No, no," Hunter said, shaking his head and getting to his feet. "It's fine, I'll take you home. It's late anyways, the metro gets super fucking sketchy."

"Nah, when I see people masturbating on the train, I'm super flattered," he said with a laugh.

"Jackass," he said, rolling his eyes at him. "Come on, you."

Sebastian rolled his eyes and got to his feet, looking down at Noelle. "Say goodbye to Tesla, we're leaving, you'll see him later," he said, waiting for a moment before gathering the cat in his arms before heading out of the apartment with Hunter. She looked up at him, mewing in protest at being moved. "I know, I know."

"I really didn't expect you to turn into this person when you got a cat."

"Can't help who I truly am," he said with a laugh, shaking his head.

"A crazy cat lady?" he asked, grinning at him.

"You're the one who had a cat before me," he said with a shrug.

Hunter chuckled, shaking his head. "I don't talk to him like he's a person."

"Maybe that's why he loves me more," he said.

"You feed him human food and you pet him, that's really all it takes," he said, shaking his head as they reached his car and he unlocked it.

"You make it sound like you don't pet him," he said. He laughed after a second, asking, "Are you secretly the guy from Pushing Daisies, but instead of a not dead dog, you have a not dead cat?"

"If Tesla died, I certainly wouldn't resurrect him."

Sebastian shook his head. "You're the worst."

"Yet you keep on coming back," he said.

"Pretty sure I've used that one on you before," Sebastian said with a laugh, shaking his head.

Hunter drove Sebastian and Noelle back to his apartment, and when he stopped the car in the parking garage, something happened. He felt a twinge somewhere inside of him, a wish to _please, please don't leave_ filling him as he watched Sebastian pulling Noelle up from where she had settled down on the floor by his feet.

"Thanks for the ride, this was much better than the night train," he said with a laugh, and maybe any other time, Hunter would have made some comment about it being the "drunk train."

But instead what he did as he saw Sebastian's free hand reaching for the door handle was this: he reached out and pulled him closer, leaning in and kissing him. There was a moment of surprise before Sebastian kissed him back and god, it was perfect.

It wasn't much. It wasn't a deep kiss and it didn't last long, just a gentle press of lips on lips, but it said enough. It promised that they were okay and they would continue to be okay, more than okay.

Sebastian pulled back and smiled at him, and neither of them said anything for a second. Then he opened the door and slowly got out, saying, "Goodnight, Chasseur."

"Goodnight, Sebastian," he said with a wide smile as he watched Sebastian walk away and go inside.


	10. Chapter 10

It was official. Hunter was completely, one hundred percent, absolutely head over heels in love with Sebastian.

It wasn't like this was new news. He had been slowly, quietly accepting that fact for a while now. But with the activity of the past month – kissing Sebastian, having sex with Sebastian, literally thinking about Sebastian just about every second of every day – it was incredibly difficult to see the situation for anything other than what it was.

The only thing that was left, he figured, was to talk to Sebastian about it. He figured that Sebastian already had an idea of how he was feeling, given the kiss and just his general behavior around Sebastian. In the time since their kiss, he had started spending the night at Sebastian's or asking Sebastian to spend the night at his apartment again, and in the nights when they were in bed in the dark together, he'd reach out and pull Sebastian close. The fact that Sebastian had never made a snarky comment about finally getting the spooning that he'd been asking for for so long told Hunter that he understood that the action wasn't insignificant.

So he felt fairly certain that Sebastian knew, it was more just a matter of openly communicating what they both knew, and agreeing to be… Boyfriends? Something. The details were something he knew would have to wait, and he was content with that; he was fairly certain that Sebastian still had feelings for him, in which case no matter what they agreed to, it would still be better than nothing. Sebastian had at one point a while back said something about being done with dating for a while, but that _was_ at least a couple months back, and he was mostly saying it just because of his recent misfortunes in dating, mostly as a joke, he was pretty sure. But even if he was serious, Hunter had to be an exception to the rule, right?

Hunter didn't let himself stress out too much over it.

That was a total lie. More accurately, Hunter didn't let himself acknowledge the fact that he was stressing out over it.

That was, until Hunter was faced with the fact that sooner or later, if he wanted to have a relationship with Sebastian, he would, in fact, have to do something about it. This shouldn't have been an issue, since they were close and communication had rarely been an issue on his end before, and yet.

"Are you alright?" Sebastian asked him one evening as he was mixing the ingredients for some flavor of fudge.

The thing was this: Hunter had been trying to bring it up all evening. Sebastian had arrived at his apartment four hours ago, and there had been several opportunities for him to say something. Over dinner, while they were cleaning up, when they sat down to watch TV after dinner. At any one of those points or practically endless points, he could have said it. But no.

He almost got up the nerve at one point. And then Sebastian got the idea that they needed to make fudge, and suddenly they were off to the store and they were buying just _way_ too much sugar to be healthy and Hunter felt like he might explode if he didn't say something. How had he turned into a teenager again, terrified to ask the object of his affections out?

"What? Yeah, I'm fine," he said.

Sebastian raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you sure? You look kind of a mess."

"Wow, thanks," he deadpanned.

"I say this from a place of caring," he said with a laugh, lifting his hand and waving it in a dismissive gesture. "You just look like maybe you're feeling either constipated or that terrible moment pre-diarrhea."

"When did you get so nice?" Hunter asked, shaking his head.

"Seriously, Hunt, if something's wrong, you can say it," he said. "And don't try and tell me it's our disgusting eating habits tonight, because you were on board. No take backs."

"No, no, that's not it," he said.

"So you admit that there is something?"

Hunter sighed softly before nodding. "Uh, yeah. It's pretty ridiculous."

"Try me," he said, raising an eyebrow.

Right. Now or never. "I've been trying to ask you out on a date."

"You've been… Seriously?" he asked, and Hunter wasn't sure whether the fact that Sebastian started laughing helped his nerves or made them a thousand times worse.

"Well, yeah…" he said.

"Oh, Hunter," he said, shaking his head and chuckling softly. "You're adorable."

"You're being delightfully patronizing right now," he said. "I just appreciate that oh so much."

"Sorry, sorry," he said, shaking his head. "It's just, you know, it already feels like we've been on several dates, you know? This would just be making it official."

"That doesn't make it any less of a big deal," he said.

"I know, I know," he said, turning to him more fully and giving him a smile. "Alright, I should not have laughed. I will now be completely serious and politely answer you when you ask me out."

"No, god, that sounds so awkward, the moment isn't right," he said.

"The moment isn't right?" he asked, chuckling. "Has the moment been wrong all evening, too?"

"The moment has been fine, I'm just an idiot," he said, shaking his head.

"I'm not going to disagree with you there," he said with a laugh, shaking his head. "If you're not man enough to do it, I'll do it for you."

"Ugh, no, don't do that," he said.

"I won't, I won't," he said with a small nod. "Take your time."

Something about it felt exceedingly ridiculous at that point. Sebastian now _knew_ that he was going to ask him out, and he had all but said yes, going so far as to offer to ask Hunter out instead, but he was still nervous. What kind of idiot was he? He sighed to himself, letting out a long breath and watching as Sebastian finished up making the fudge.

 _You're just asking him to go on a date with you. You're not telling him you love him, or asking him to move in with you, or proposing marriage. Just a date. He's told you he loves you before. Relax, jackass._

And while he wasn't ready to completely negate the possibility of any of those other things, they weren't there yet and he had absolutely no reason to be this concerned with it.

Sebastian went over to the fridge to put the fudge in to chill, and when he turned around he was faced with Hunter right in front of him. "Oh. Hi. You're close."

"Do you want to go on a date with me?"

There was a pause as Sebastian teasingly had to think about it. "I don't know, I mean, are you sure we aren't moving too fast?"

"You're not funny," he said.

"Okay, okay, sorry," he said. "You're just cute when you're all panicked and a little bit pouty."

"I am a hundred percent sure I'm not pouty," he said.

"Sorry, babe, I don't make the rules. You're pouty, that just is how it is," he said.

"If I am pouty, which I am not, it is only because you're a terrible jerk," he said.

"Can I kiss and make it better?" Once Hunter nodded, Sebastian was leaning in, placing a hand on Hunter's chest as he gave him a gentle kiss, and somehow he couldn't find it in him to be upset with him anymore.

* * *

They had their date the upcoming Friday.

There was, of course, the problem that Sebastian had pointed out: they had essentially been dating for a while now just without officially calling it that, and they had already used up what Hunter would have considered his best potential date spots. And while sure, Sebastian probably would have been fine with going to one of the same places again, it didn't feel right to him. He wanted it to be special, and that entailed at least some amount of surprise for Sebastian. And that shouldn't be hard, should it?

He ended up Googling 'first date ideas,' hoping that maybe something there would inspire him to create a perfect evening for him and Sebastian, until he realized how very embarrassed he would be if Sebastian were to find out that he had done so.

Sebastian would be happy to just get some dinner and then hang out at one of their apartments. He knew that. He knew that he would be happy with just changing essentially nothing in their relationship except for adding in an official title and, of course, things like kissing and everything. And maybe they could do that, but they needed to have a real first date first, right?

In the end, what he does end up going with is a nice restaurant a few blocks from his apartment. It's nothing too fancy, and it wasn't quite the Perfect First Date that Hunter was looking for, but at the same time he had to remind himself that he wasn't a high school student trying to impress his first girlfriend anymore. He was an adult, and the line between friendship and more had _always_ been a bit blurry between them, so maybe Sebastian was right and he was overthinking it. He managed to talk Sebastian into wearing something at least somewhat nice, and that was good enough.

When Sebastian arrived at his door (there had been some debate over this, Hunter saying that he needed to be the one "picking up" Sebastian given that he had been the one to ask him out, but ultimately losing because of the fact that the restaurant was closer to Hunter's apartment so crossing town just wouldn't make sense), there was no moment like there was in the movies of soft-focus and _holy shit he's hot_. He reasoned that it was probably because he had come to that realization long ago, and with or without a well-fitting suit jacket, Sebastian was indisputably attractive.

For a moment, Hunter flashed back to one of his first conversations with Sebastian, about whether or not Hunter could see, as a straight man, that Sebastian was attractive. _Oh, how far we've come._

"Ready to go, champ?" Sebastian asked him with a grin, and he fondly rolled his eyes at him.

"Yeah, c'mon," he said, stepping back into the hallway with Sebastian and locking his apartment door.

"Since this is our first date and all, I should probably say something about how you look nice. So hey, you look handsome," he said with a laugh, and even though Sebastian was still making fun of him, he knew that there was still sincerity there, both in the compliment and in the fact that he was respecting the fact that Hunter wanted to have a good first date even if he didn't see the point.

"You're looking pretty good yourself," he said with a grin.

"I know I do," Sebastian said, taking Hunter's hand as they left his apartment.

And god, everything was perfect. Hunter still felt a little bit like a teenager on his first date, but there was something about that that felt right, too. Just being with Sebastian, holding his hand as they walked down the street, it was perfect.

Dinner was nice, too, and simple. Sure, it wasn't particularly remarkable, just your average sort of dinner out on the town, but he wasn't really expecting it to be anything more than that. They had long since worn out any typical first date topics of conversation, and they went out to eat together enough that it didn't feel particularly out of the ordinary, aside from the quiet knowledge in the back of his mind that this was a date, a real date, not just them eating together.

"And now," Sebastian said at one point during the meal, as they were finishing up their entrees, "here is the point in the first date where we've talked a bit and we've decided in our heads whether or not we like each other, and based on that we'll start doing things like getting dessert, or making excuses to leave, like oh, my sister's calling and it's important."

"So, what'll it be?" he asked him with a grin.

He just chuckled softly, rolling his eyes. "Next time you see the waiter, call him over," he said. "We need to see a dessert menu."

"That's what I like to hear," he said with a laugh, waving their waiter over.

As they were finishing off the tiramisu that they had ordered to share, Sebastian spoke up again.

"So, I've got an idea."

Hunter nodded, raising an eyebrow at him. "Okay, what is this idea?"

"Remember the night we met?" he asked.

"How could I forget?" he said with a soft laugh, gesturing for him to go on.

"That club near your apartment," he said. "We should go."

"Wait, what?" he asked.

"You heard me," he said, grinning at him. "Let's go, have a few drinks, maybe dance a little. You wanted our first date to be special, right?"

"Special, yes, but… I don't know, Sebastian, bad things happen when I drink."

"Like what? Having sex with the hottest guy you ever met?" he asked with a laugh. "Which yes, I will admit, did not _immediately_ work out, but long term I think it was a good choice."

"I just in general make poor decisions when I get alcohol in me."

"That's fun," he said, chuckling. Shrugging, he added, "But I mean, if you don't want to get drunk, that's okay. Just have a drink or two, just enough to get a pleasant buzz going, and dance with me."

Hunter stopped for a moment to consider it. He had, after all, never been before, and he _was_ looking for a way to make this date stand out from anything they'd done before. He looked back at Sebastian after a bit, nodding. "Alright, okay, let's do it."

"I knew you'd say that," he said with a grin.

"Don't get too cocky," he said with a laugh, shaking his head.

"I'm going dancing and I know I'm going home with the guy I'm going to be with," he said, chuckling. "I can't help it."

Hunter rolled his eyes fondly at him. He paid the check and they left the restaurant, making the walk to the bar. Before they went inside, Sebastian looked them over, deciding that their attire was acceptable for the venue (stating, however, that they were, "a bit overdressed, but maybe we're just those people.")

It was loud. Hunter knew it would be, he wasn't sure what he had been expecting, you could hear it from outside, so of course it would be loud, but _damn_ it was loud. And crowded. There was barely room to stand.

Sebastian took Hunter's hand and started to lead him through the crowd, looking back at him and saying something that he couldn't quite make out (as previously noted, it was _loud_ ), but seeing the direction he was leading him in, he figured it was something to do with going to the bar to get drinks.

Hunter let him order drinks for the both of them, just standing beside him and still holding his hand as he waited until he had to let go to take the drinks from the bartender.

"Here you are, good sir," Sebastian said with a grin as he turned around, offering him one of the glasses. "A Cuba libre for you."

"Cuba libre?" he echoed with a laugh, rolling his eyes.

"Rum and coke sounds lame," he said. " _And_ does not have the benefit of having historical significance that I can use to impress hot guys."

"I'm not going to encourage you," Hunter said, shaking his head.

"Fine," he said. "Just enjoy your drink, sans trivia, dick."

"I'm sorry, you're right, I should be making you work harder," he said.

Sebastian laughed, rolling his eyes. "Of course."

They found themselves a small bar near the wall, staying there for a bit just drinking and chatting with each other. Sebastian looked around the room, his eyes returning to Hunter a moment later. "You said you've never been here, right?" he asked with a grin.

"That's right," he said with a small nod, raising an eyebrow.

"And nowhere else like it? No clubs or anything?"

Hunter shook his head. "Not really. Why?"

"We have to dance, then. No way around it," he said with a laugh.

"No way," he said. "Not happening."

"Oh, come on, Hunter," he said. "It'll be fun."

"I am nowhere near drunk enough to allow myself to do that," he said, immediately realizing the words were a mistake as Sebastian got to his feet. "That was _not_ a challenge."

"Too late," he called over his shoulder before returning to the bar. He came back a moment later, carrying a shot glass in each hand.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "That is not happening. I am not doing shots."

"You're right, you're not doing shots," Sebastian said, winking at him. " _We_ are doing shots. As much drinking as necessary. And then we're going to dance."

"Why do I like you?" he mumbled, though he knew he wouldn't be able to hear him, shaking his head.

And so they both tipped the shots back and downed them.

And, after a bit, Hunter did allow himself to be dragged out onto the floor.

From that point forward, the time they spent at the club was a bit of a blur, not necessarily because of alcohol (though he did, absolutely, drink more than the rum and coke and the one shot, though if you were to ask he couldn't tell you what exactly he drank and how many), maybe more like a mix of the alcohol along with the sheer amount of everything that was going on around him.

The highlights that he remembered were as follows:

Sebastian was an amazing dancer, just like he would have suspected he would be if he had ever put much thought to it. It was a good thing, too, because it meant that Hunter was able to just let him take the lead and not worry about the fact that he had never been much for dancing, especially not this kind of dancing.

He was vaguely aware of people around them watching them (which had been, of course, part of the reason that he had not wanted to dance) and he was also aware of _Sebastian's_ awareness of them, which led to the fun realization that the other man was surprisingly territorial, making more of a point of touching Hunter and putting himself between anyone who might have tried to edge their way in.

Even though Hunter had thought that Sebastian might have been kidding about impressing guys with drink trivia, he did go on to share some fun facts about any drinks that they saw or imbibed over the course of the evening.

(With all of the above facts combined with the alcohol in Hunter's system, it was a small miracle that he did not at any point during the night declare his love for Sebastian, especially not repeatedly.)

And lastly, alcohol made him _tired_. He forgot about how true that was until it was too late and he was beyond being fun and the good kind of dizzy and was moving into wanting to just curl up against Sebastian.

"Do you want to go home?" Sebastian asked him eventually, evidently picking up on the fact that he had tired himself out.

"Yeah," he said with a small nod. He allowed himself to be led as Sebastian took his hand once more, leading him through the people in the club until they reached they exit.

The night air around them was cool enough that it woke Hunter up a bit, more alert and still drunk enough that in the low light provided by the street lights they were passing by, Sebastian looked so great that he had to stop and kiss him a few times along the way, likely doubling the time it should have taken them to get from point A to point B.

But eventually they did reach his apartment, struggling a bit on the stairs up to his door but getting there alright.

"So, I'm pretty sure this is the part where I kiss you goodnight on your porch and say goodbye," Sebastian said as they approached the apartment door, looking over at Hunter who was looking for his key.

"Don't you dare leave," he replied with a laugh, shaking his head and stopping his search on his keyring in order to kiss him.

"Hmm, you do make a wonderful argument," he mumbled against Hunter's lips.

"I know," he said with a grin, hesitating for a moment before pulling back (having to remind himself that just because he stopped kissing Sebastian for a moment didn't mean he had to continue to not kiss Sebastian), returning to finding his key to let them into the apartment (where the kissing Sebastian could continue).

They didn't have sex that night. They didn't have sex for at least another month after that, Sebastian at first citing that they shouldn't have drunk sex _again_ , and especially not for their first time as an official couple, and after that point admitting, after some badgering by Hunter, that he, too, was trying to ensure that they were doing everything right.

Instead, they just kissed, and Sebastian let Hunter take off his shirt, and Hunter let Sebastian do the same, hands moving over skin, and that was as far as it went.

After that they just laid together for a while, talking about nothing, their voices just above whispers as they talked about anything that came to mind. They got up and changed into more comfortable pants eventually, still leaving off their shirts, and laid down together. Tired from a mixture of a long day and the heady drowsiness that comes with alcohol, they laid together, arms wrapped around each other as they continued to talk just loud enough for the other to hear. They both had to fight to stay awake, not wanting to let go of the moment, until eventually sleep got the better of them.

* * *

The hardest part about going into a relationship already being in love with the other person (along with having had the other person tell you in the past that they were in love with you) was knowing when to actually _say_ it. Hunter felt fairly certain that they both probably knew that they loved each other, but it was one thing to know that and another to actually say it, and he didn't want to make their relationship feel too rushed. He wanted it to be perfect and he wanted it to last, and it seemed to him that running headfirst into it could turn out to be a pretty good way to potentially mess it up.

He told himself he had to wait at least a month. That seemed at least somewhat reasonable. It might have been a bit fast if they hadn't known each other before, and if they were younger it would be fast in the way that was typical of young people, which is to say that people wouldn't take it seriously. But he and Sebastian had practically been dating long before they were officially dating, so that definitely took some time off of the "too soon" counter.

Besides, he figured, he had made it past the first date without blurting it out, so at very least he had one up on Ted Mosby.

So when the one month mark hit (and Hunter resolved himself to not say anything about their monthiversary because that, absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt would have gotten him teased by Sebastian), he started considering saying it. He would pause in a moment and ask himself if that was the right time or not, because he was just that kind of person. He considered maybe making some sort of meal, but in the end decided that that would be too much, and why the hell did he keep finding himself having trouble with these kinds of things?

In the end, the issue solved itself.

One evening, Sebastian let himself into Hunter's apartment, without warning and without announcing himself. That in and of itself didn't necessarily mean a lot, seeing as it was fairly common for them to just make themselves at home at each other's apartments, but when he went straight to where Hunter was sitting on the couch and sat down, gently nudging him backwards so that he was laying down, he started to get the feeling that something was up.

"Hey," Hunter said, looking down as Sebastian wound his arms around him. "You okay?"

"I'm exhausted," he said with a small nod. "Today was…" He paused, groaning. "I don't even know. Today kicked my ass. It's one of those days where I kind of wonder why I ever agreed to this whole law school thing. Right now I just kind of want to, like, you know. This."

"Okay," he said, turning the volume down on the TV and embracing him. He slowly ran his hand up Sebastian's spine, eventually tangling his fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, making him hum happily.

"Thank you," Sebastian mumbled, letting out a sigh and nuzzling his face into the curve where Hunter's neck met his shoulder. "You're holding me together here."

After a bit, he said softly, "I could make us dinner or something."

"Don't you dare move," he replied, his arms tightening around him.

Hunter chuckled softly, nodding and rubbing between Sebastian's shoulder blades. "Got it."

"Thank you," he said, laying his head back down against his chest once the threat of him moving was gone.

And from there, it was almost like Hunter couldn't hold himself back from speaking even if he had wanted to. "I love you."

Sebastian looked back up at him again, chuckling softly.

"What?"

"You are totally ruining my moping," he said. "You've really got to stop all… this."

"Ah, no, I really think I can't," he said.

"You're the worst," Sebastian said, shifting up slightly and bringing his hand to Hunter's jaw as he kissed him. "I love you too."

Hunter smiled into the kiss. "You mean I'm the best," he said.

Rolling his eyes, Sebastian rested his head against his boyfriend's shoulder again. "No arguments here," he mumbled, pressing a soft kiss to his neck.

Hunter chuckled softly before he closed his eyes for a moment, letting out a soft breath and just enjoying the feeling of Sebastian curled up against him. Sebastian was a cuddler, but not usually the type to just hold onto him like this, doing nothing else. He'd never known before how much he would love being able to be with someone like this, offering a comfort in such a simple way.

He wasn't a deeply philosophical person. But god, he couldn't help it, laying here with Sebastian, wondering about where he would be now if he had just gone inside and ignored the drunk guy shouting at him, or if Sebastian's ex hadn't lived in a building that looked like his, or if Sebastian hadn't caught said ex cheating. He never would've known the difference, he knew that logically, but still…

"Hunter."

Hunter opened his eyes again to see Sebastian looking at him, his face somehow both amused and concerned.

"Hey. Welcome back," he said. "What were you thinking about?"

"Nothing," he said, shaking his head.

"No, c'mon," Sebastian said as he shook his head, chuckling and nudging him. "Tell me."

"If you'll allow me to be cheesy, I was kind of thinking about how much I love you."

Sebastian rolled his eyes at him, but the smile on his face betrayed him. "Oh god, shut up, you," he said, laughing. He kissed him again softly before sitting back slightly. "You offered to make dinner earlier."

"I did," he said, nodding. "I can still do that."

"You're the best."

It took a bit of convincing for Sebastian to allow him to get up, and even then once they were in the kitchen he picked back up clinging to Hunter, but he couldn't find it in him to complain. Sebastian wasn't always a sentimental person, so he knew what this meant. It meant _I love you._ It meant _you're perfect_ and _I can't believe you're mine_ and _what would I do without you?_ and _you're so fucking cute._

So even though it was hard to move around the kitchen with Sebastian there, hugging him from behind, he just turned his head to kiss his temple. _I love you too. You might be the love of my life._

Everything was good.


End file.
